Active Monitoring in GRID environments using Mobile Agent technologyOrazio TomarchioAndrea CalvagnaDipartimento di Ingegneria Informatica e delle TelecomunicazioniUniversit di Catania (ITALY)tomarchio@iit.unict.it andrea.calvagna@iit.unict.it

Outline Monitoring Grid systems Mobile agents paradigms Mobile agents and monitoring MAP: a mobile agents platform Architecture description Conclusions

Grid MonitoringThe capability of monitoring distributed computational resources effectively is a crucial factor for high-performance distributed computation

As distributed systems become bigger, and more widely distributed, automating the operations of monitoring becomes very important.

Grid MonitoringWhy is monitoring important? to find the cause of performance problemsfor tuning systems parameters in order to optimize resource usagefault detectionto build prediction models of performance (used by sophisticated scheduling algorithms)for billing and accounting

Grid MonitoringWhat are the problems to deal with? Wasting of resources dedicated to monitoring purposesScalabilityPossibility to start monitoring application on-demandPossibility to customize monitoring strategiesDifferent metrics of measurement data

Grid Monitoring with Agents

Mobile code and agents:basic assumptions and characteristics Key issues for using mobile agents technology in the monitoring context

Mobile CodeThe basic idea is allowing to move code to remote sites and execute transferred code thereproblems arising from mobility, e.g.heterogeneity of systemssecurity (as more parties are involved)Programming paradigms based on mobile code can be divided according to initiator of code transfer

Programming paradigms based on code mobility

Mobile AgentsMobile Agents are program instances that are able move within a network under their own controlmobile agents consist of:code data state (i.e. variables)execution state (i.e. stack)Some basic capabilities:able to autonomously migrate between placesable to communicate to each othersome agents offer services or interfaces to legacy applications

Application Areas for Mobile AgentsDistributed Information RetrievalMobile computingDistributed Network ManagementCollaborative and workflow applicationsActive networksElectronic commerce Grid monitoring (?)

Grid Monitoring with agents: key issuesCustomizable algorithms of data analysis dinamically executed on-demand by the userReduction of network loadFiltering of monitoring data at several abstraction level without high overheads for the systemAsynchronous and indipendent execution of taskIntegration of heterogeneous resource monitoring toolsOn-demand enabling of necessary services

MAP: a Mobile Agent Platformhttp://sun195.iit.unict.it/MAP/MAP is a software platform for the development and the management of mobile agents. Its main characteristics are:It provides an environment in which agents can execute, stop and resume their execution, communicate among them, move on other nodes on the networkIt is entirely developed using the Java language, which provides total architecture independenceThe platform also provides different programming paradigms for distributed systems, such as remote evaluation and code on demandIn the latest version it has been made MASIF compliant

MAP architecture MAPServerMAPServerRegionRegistratorRegionMAPServerMAPServerRegionRegistratorRegion

Graphic interface for agents control and management

Main features of MAP

Key features of MAP relevant for Grid systems are:

securityinteroperability with different agents systems

Monitoring with agents: System ArchitectureDirectoryServiceAgent CacheRepositoryPerformanceData RepositoryResource

Monitoring with agents: Basic componentsLow-Level sensors (LLSensors)SensorAgentsHigh-Level Monitoring Agents (HLMAgents)

Low-Level Sensor Manager (LLSManager)Directory ServicePerformance Data RepositoryAgent Cache Repository

Monitoring with agents: Basic componentsLow-Level sensors (LLSensors)

they are not agents (in general)specific for each resourcedirectly interfaced with resources

The Low-Level Sensor Manager deals with their registration in the Directory Service

Monitoring with agents: Basic componentsSensor AgentsThey use the data supplied by the LLSensors for providing uniform informations about the state of a resourceResources taken into account include:hostsnetworkstorageprocess/applications

Monitoring with agents: Basic componentsHigh-Level Monitoring Agents (HLMAgents)

Their task is gathering significant information relying on all the agents present in the systemuser or application initiated (e.g. CollectSensorAgent, AggregateAgent)event-initiated (e.g. TrapAgent)

Monitoring with agents: Basic componentsDirectory Service

Basically the Directory Service maintains informations on what kind of Sensors are available for the different resources.

Monitoring with agents: Basic componentsPerformance Data Repositoryto store the events and data recorded by LLSensors and SensorAgents

Agent Cache Repositorya repository of agents that have been executed within the region

Piano temporale attivitPeople2 persone al 30%Orazio TomarchioAndrea Calvagna

Piano temporale attivitTaskstask 1 M0-M1 Evaluation of mobile agent technology for Grid network monitoring

task 2 M0-M2 Use and testing of MAP (Mobile Agent Platform) in a Grid environment (eventually adapt it to new requirements imposed by geographically dispersed environment)

task 3M1-M4 Definition of a base architecture for monitoring networks using mobile agents

Piano temporale attivitTaskstask 4 M2-M3 Evaluation of this approach against more traditional approach

task 5 M4-M9 Integration/Interfacing the agent platform with existing low-level tools for gathering network informations.

task 6M4-M12 Implementation of the proposed approach and experimental measurements and validations.