Developing Scheduling Policies in gLite Middleware

We describe our experiences from implementing and integrating a new job scheduling algorithm in the gLite Grid middleware and present experimental results that compare it to the existing gLite scheduling algorithms. It is the first time that gLite scheduling algorithms are put under test and compared with a new algorithm under the same conditions. We describe the problems that were encountered and solved, going from theory and simulations to practice and the actual implementation of our scheduling algorithm. In this work we also describe the steps one needs to follow in order to develop and test a new scheduling algorithm in gLite. We present the methodology followed and the testbed that was set up for the comparisons. Our research sheds light on some of the problems of the existing gLite scheduling algorithms and makes clear the need for the development of new.