Modelling memory requirements for grid applications

Automating the execution of applications in grid computing environments is a complicated task due to the heterogeneity of computing resources, resource usage policies, and application requirements. Applications differ in memory usage, performance, scalability and storage usage. Having knowledge of this information can aid in matching jobs to resources and in selecting appropriate configuration parameters such as the number of processors to run on and memory requirements for those resources. This paper presents an application memory usage model that can be used to aid in selecting appropriate job configurations for different resources. The model can be used to represent how memory scales with the number of processors, the memory usage of different types of processes, and changes in memory usage during execution. It builds on a previously developed information model used for describing resources, resource usage policies and limited information on applications. An analysis of the memory usage model illustrating its use towards automating job execution in grid computing environments is also presented.