GT4 GRAM: A Functionality and Performance Study
Martin Feller, Ian Foster, Stuart Martin · SciVee · 2007
Abstract — The Globus Toolkit’s pre-Web Services GRAM service (“GRAM2”) has been widely deployed on grids around the world for many years. Recent work has produced a new, Web Services-based GRAM service (“GRAM4”). We describe and compare the functionality and per-formance of the GRAM2 and GRAM4 job execution services included in Globus Toolkit version 4 (GT4). GRAM4 provides significant improve-ments in functionality and scalability over GRAM2 in many areas. GRAM4 is faster in the case of many concurrent submissions, but slower for sequential submissions and when file staging is involved. (Optimizations to address the latter cases are in progress.) This information should be useful when considering an upgrade from GRAM2 to GRAM4, and when comparing GRAM against other job execution services.