G-PBox: a Policy Framework for Grid Environments
Ciaschini, Andrea Ferraro, Andrea Caltroni, Antonia Ghiselli, G Rubini, Regina Escano Zappi · CERN Document Server (European Organization for Nuclear Research) · 2005
A key feature of Grid environments is sharing computing and storage resources among multiple Virtual Organizations (VOs).This process needs a comprehensive policy framework.Policy management tools have been developed for single farms, but Grids need a more flexible and distributed policy concept.Usually VOs and local systems share contracts to regulate resource usage, hence complex relationships among these entities implying different types of policies may exist: VO-oriented, local systems-oriented, and a mix of the two.We propose an approach to the representation and management of such policies: the Grid Policy Box (G-PBox) framework.Our approach is based on a set of databases belonging to hierarchically-organised layers distributed on the Grid and VOs structures.Each layer contains at least policies regarding itself.Layers must communicate to each other to accomodate for mixed policies, originating the need for a secure communication service frameworkfor privacy reasons -with the ability to sort and dispatch various kind of policies to the involved parties.In this paper we present our first implementation of the G-PBox, and its architecture details, and we discuss the plans for G-PBox-related application and research.