Investigating autonomic behaviours in grid-based computational science applications

Emerging Grid infrastructures present unprecedented op- portunities for computational science and engineering, with the potential for fundamental insights into complex phe- nomenon. However, it also presents unprecedented chal- lenges in terms of its scale, heterogeneity, dynamism and overall complexity that must be addressed before this po- tential can be realized. Autonomic computing concepts have been effectively used to address similar challenges in enter- prise systems and applications; in this paper, we explore the role of autonomic computing to Grid-based computational science applications. Specifcally, we use three represen- tative computational applications to motivate Autonomic Computational Science (ACS). Using these applications, we develop a conceptual framework for ACS, consisting of mech- anisms, strategies and objectives, and demonstrate how these concepts can be used to express autonomic behaviors. Fi- nally we explore a research agenda towards realizing ACS behaviors and developing self-* patterns for large scale au- tonomic computational science application