GriT: A CORBA-based GRID Middleware Architecture

Rapid advances in networking, hardware, and middle-ware technologies are facilitating the development and de-ployment of Grid applications, which are characterized by their very high computing and resource requirements. These applications and services have multiple, simultane-ous end-to-end quality of service (QoS) requirements, such as delay guarantees, jitter guarantees, security, scalabil-ity, reliability and availability guarantees, and bandwidth and throughput guarantees. Moreover, these applications and services require secure, controlled, reliable, and guar-anteed access to different types of resources, such as net-work bandwidth, computing power, and storage capabili-ties, available from multiple service providers. To support next-generation Grid applications effectively, there is a need to simplify grid programming by developing a new Grid middleware that raises the level of abstraction, and reduces the accidental complexities incurred by pro-gramming at the Grid infrastructure middleware level of-fered by existing Grid middleware such as Globus, ICENI, and Legion. Moreover, the new Grid middleware must en-sure multiple end-to-end QoS properties simultaneously. The paper provides three contributions to the research on next generation Grid middleware architecture that provides the above-mentioned properties. First, we describe how we are utilizing the standards-based CORBA distributed object computing and integration technology to design the next generation Grid middleware, called Grid TAO (GriT) that complements and enhances existing low-level Grid middle-ware, such as Globus. Second, we describe how we are us-ing the real-time, fault-tolerant, and data parallel CORBA features to implement GriT to provide the desired proper-ties. Finally, we show how CORBA’s platform and language independence features are used in GriT to resolve the porta-bility and interoperability challenges faced by current grid applications