The computational Co-op: Gathering clusters into a metacomputer

We explore the creation of a metacomputer by the aggregation of independent sites. Joining a metacomputer is voluntary, and hence it has to be an endeavor that mutually benefits all parties involved. We identify proportional-share allocation as a key component of such a mutual benefit. Proportional-share allocation is the basis for enforcing the agreement reached among the sites on how to use the metacomputer's resources. We introduce a resource manager that provides proportional-share allocation over a cluster of workstations, assuming applications to be master-slave. This manager is novel because it performs non-preemptive proportional scheduling of multiple processors. A prototype has been implemented and we report on preliminary results. Finally, we discuss how tickets (first-class entities that encapsulate allocation endowments) can be used in practice to enforce the meta-computer agreement, and also how they can ease the site selection to be performed by the application.