Surfer: an extensible pull-based framework for resource selection and ranking

Grid computing aims to connect large numbers of geographically and organizationally distributed resources to increase computational power resource utilization, and resource accessibility. In order to effectively utilize Grids, users need to be connected to the best available resources at any given time. As Grids are in constant flux, users cannot be expected to keep up with the configuration and status of the Grid, thus they must be provided with automatic resource brokering for selecting and ranking resources meeting constraints and preferences they specify. This work presents a new OGSI-compliant resource selection and ranking framework called Surfer that has been implemented as part of NASA´s Information Power Grid (IPG) project. Surfer is highly extensible and may be integrated into any Grid environment by adding information providers knowledgeable about that environment. Surfer invisibly and seamlessly correlates results from different providers into a single unified view seen by the user.