Scalable Resource Annotation in Peer-to-Peer Grids

Peer-to-peer grids are large-scale, dynamic environments where autonomous sites share computing resources. Producing and maintaining relevant and up-to-date resource information in such environments is a challenging problem, due to the grid scale, the resource heterogeneity, and the variety of user demand. This work proposes a peer-to-peer annotation approach where users can freely annotate available resources as a solution to this problem. We advocate that the proposed approach (i) is scalable, as the job of updating the resource information is divided among users; (ii) will improve resources´ utilization, by reducing the amount of resources which are allocated to users without matching their applications constraints; and (iii) will allow resource allocators to increase users´ utility, leveraging access to more detailed preference descriptions. The paper also discusses the challenges in implementing and deploying such approach and present solutions to tackle these challenges.