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The Gridbus Project to Release GriSim 2.2 Software
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The open source Gridbus Project, led by the Grid Computing and Distributed
Systems (GRIDS)
Laboratory at the University of Melbourne, Australia, is pleased to release the
next-version of Grid simulation software, the GridSim 2.2 toolkit.

The new version of GridSim includes substantial improvements:
- adds new functionalities regarding to Job or Gridlet migration.
New methods in GridSim class are
* gridletCancel(): cancels a Gridlet executed in a GridResource
* gridletMove(): moves a Gridlet to a different GridResource
* gridletPause(): pauses an executed Gridlet
* gridletResume(): resumes a previously paused Gridlet
* gridletStatus(): queries the status of a Gridlet

- each Job or Gridlet has its own activity log or history.
Therefore, you can view where this Gridlet being assigned to and
how long the execution takes.

- decouples both Time-Shared and Space-Shared allocation policy
from inside GridResource class into separate classes. This way,
new allocation policy can be made and integrated into the GridSim
Toolkit easily without the need to recompile and reconstruct
the whole package.

- rewritten Time-Shared and Space-Shared allocation policy to
incorporate Gridlet migration and new functionalities.

- uses the new version of SimJava, i.e. version 2 instead of 1.2
- fix minor bugs

All components developed as part of the GridSim Toolkit are released as open
source under
the GPL license to encourage innovation and pass full freedom to our users.

The early version of our GridSim toolkit has been used and downloaded by several
academic
and commercial organizations around the world, including: California Institute
of
Technology, Argonne National Lab, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign,
Manchester
University, CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research), National
University of
Singapore, Tsinghua University, Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Sun
Microsystems,
IBM, Unisys, HP, British Telecom, and EMC Corporation.

The GridSim software has been used for modeling and simulating many interesting
systems.
For example, one of the users from Unisys is exploring its use in data center
modeling.
Our own usages include simulating an economic Grid scheduler in a competitive
economy
model; and for an economy-based cluster scheduler.

The contributors to the GridSim software - both early and new versions - are:

For the GridSim base platform (and also broker):

Anthony Sulistio, GRIDS Lab (University of Melbourne)
Rajkumar Buyya, GRIDS Lab (University of Melbourne)
Manzur Murshed, GSCIT (Monash University)

For the GridSim visual modeler:

Anthony Sulistio, GRIDS Lab (University of Melbourne)
Chee Shin Yeo, GRIDS Lab (University of Melbourne)

To download the GridSim software, please visit the Gridbus Project website:
http://www.gridbus.org/gridsim. The GridSim 2.2 Toolkit Release notes can be
found at:
http://www.gridbus.org/gridsim/gridsim2.2. We hope that the users of GridSim
will find
this new version useful. If you need any specific clarification on the Gridbus
Project or
the GridSim Toolkit, please contact the developers.

The GridSim members are currently working on next-generation GridSim that
supports
simulation infrastructure for Advance Resource Reservation. The next version is
estimated
to be released in March 2004!

About the GRIDS Lab and Gridbus Project

The Grid Computing and Distributed Systems (GRIDS) Laboratory is a software
research and
development group within the Dept. of Computer Science and Software Engineering
at the
University of Melbourne, Australia. The Parallel and Distributed Computing (PDC)
Research
Group is one of the five research groups in the department. The University of
Melbourne is
Australia's leading research based university, with an international profile
through its
reputation for scholarship and teaching. The members of GRIDS Lab and PDC
research group
are actively engaged in the design and development of next generation computing
systems
and applications. The GRIDS lab is working towards realizing this vision through
its
flagship project called Gridbus.

The Gridbus project, in collaboration with leading researchers around the world,
is
developing fundamental open-source technologies for service-oriented Grid and
utility
computing. They include Economic Grid Scheduler, Cluster Scheduler (Libra), Grid
modeling
and simulation (GridSim), Data Grid broker, GridBank, G-monitor, Gridscape, and
visual
tools for workflow management and composition of distributed applications from
legacy
software components. The Gridbus scheduling system aggregates or leases of
services of
distributed resources depending on their availability, capability, performance,
cost, and
users' quality-of-service requirements. The Gridbus technology development is
driven by
requirements of various application domains such as Drug Design, High Energy
Physics,
Brain Activity Analysis, and Natural Language Engineering. The World Wide Grid
(WWG)
testbed used in the research contains resources from organizations around the
globe.

The research and development activities of GRIDS lab and Gridbus project are
sponsored by
Sun Microsystems, California, USA; Victorian Partnership for Advanced Computing,
University of Melbourne, IBM (recently for Belle Analysis Data Grid Testbed),
and
Australian Government. The Gridbus Project welcomes collaboration opportunities
from
individuals, groups, communities, or companies around the world.

About the authors of GridSim 2.2:

* Anthony Sulistio is a doctoral candidate at the Grid Computing and Distributed
Systems
(GRIDS) Laboratory at the Department of Computer Science and Software
Engineering at the
University of Melbourne. His current research revolves around Grid Simulation
infrastructure for the design and evaluation of advanced reservation of
resources and grid
economy.

* Rajkumar Buyya is Program Leader/Director of the Grid Computing and
Distributed Systems
(GRIDS) Laboratory at the Department of Computer Science and Software
Engineering at the
University of Melbourne. He is also co-chair of the IEEE Computer Society's Task
Force on
Cluster Computing. He edited the two-volume High Performance Cluster Computing:
Architectures and Systems (Prentice Hall, 1999), as well as High Performance
Mass Storage
and Parallel I/O: Technologies and Applications (With Tony Cortes and Hai Jin.
John Wiley
and Sons, 2001.) Raj can be contacted via his Web site, http://www.buyya.com.
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