AssessGrid strategies for provider ranking mechanisms in risk-aware grid systems

Abstract

Grid systems are on the verge of attracting the commercial user who requires contractually fixed levels of service quality. Service Level Agreements (SLAs) are powerful instruments for describing all obligations and expectations within such a Grid-based business relationship. Service selection has so far been based on performance and compatibility criteria while neglecting the factor of reliability and risk. The EC-funded project "AssessGrid" aims at introducing risk assessment and management as a novel decision paradigm into Grid computing. With AssessGrid, providers are able to express the risk associated with an SLA, and broker services are able to judge the trustworthiness of such provider risk statements. This paper focuses on the provider ranking process where a broker or end-user has to decide which provider to choose from, and consequently which SLA to commit to. © 2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.