Cluster Computing manuscript No. (will be inserted by the editor) Experiences with Self-Organizing, Decentralized Grids Using the Grid Appliance

Abstract \Give a man a sh, feed him for a day. Teach a man to sh, feed him for a lifetime " { Lau Tzu Large-scale grid computing projects such as Tera-Grid and Open Science Grid provide researchers vast amounts of compute resources but with requirements that could limit access, results delayed due to poten-tially long job queues, and environments and policies that might affect a user's work ow. In many scenarios and in particular with the advent of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) cloud computing, individual users and communities can benet from less restrictive, dynamic systems that include a combination of local resources and on-demand resources provisioned by one or more IaaS provider. These types of scenarios benet from exibility in deploying resources, remote access, and en-vironment conguration. In this paper, we address how small groups can dynamically create, join, and manage grid infrastruc-tures with low administrative overhead. Our work dis-tinguishes itself from other projects with similar objects by enabling a combination of decentralized system orga-nization and user access for job submission in addition to a web 2.0 interfaces for managing grid membership and automate certicate management. These compo