gSLM: Service Delivery and Service Level Management in Grid Infrastructures

The gSLM project aims to improve Service Level Management (SLM) in the Grid domain by bringing together experts in Grid operations and management with leading members of the IT service management community. The project will generate new approaches and concepts for Grid SLM and offer best practices from e-Infrastructure service provision as contributions to SLM research on systems that span multiple administrative domains.

The need for grid SLM

Grid computing is the most complex example of the e-Infrastructure services that are provided in a cross-organisational, dynamic fashion. It has been widely used for more than a decade in the scientific community for large-scale computation and the distributed storage and management of data. The Grid has already come a long way, and the emerging hybrid environments providing industry standard Cloud interfaces to resources managed by National Grid Initiatives will make these service more accessible and attractive to even broader research community.

The agreements used to access and control the use of the hundreds of thousands of computers in Europe’s academic Grids are generally quite informal. This was sufficient in the past, as the Grid was still in development, and loose agreements were sufficient. Now that the volume of use has grown and the Grid is increasingly used for mission critical or commercial purposes, a new, more concrete approach based on more formal Service Level Management is needed.

Beginning of project:
End of project: 31 August 2012

Website: http://www.gslm.eu/