GlobalWatch: A Distributed Service Grid Monitoring Platform with High Flexibility and Usability

GlobalWatch is a distributed platform to monitor various resources of grid platforms so as to improve the flexibility and usability of grid systems. In order to enhance the flexibility, we make improvements from three aspects. 1) We take advantage of both centralized and decentralized methods in the architecture and adopt a loosely coupled architecture to get monitored data; 2) We integrate GlobalWatch with VO (Virtual Organization) concept so as to make it compatible with grid circumstances. 3) We design a XML format to make GlobalWatch flexible for users to submit and receive information. In order to enhance the usability, we not only integrate various functions into GlobalWatch client application, but also make the visual effect better than some other monitoring platforms. At last, we conclude from the experimental result that monitored nodes in GlobalWatch are indeed loosely coupled and the transmission of map data is the main bottleneck in server end