Metacomputing: An Evaluation of Emerging Systems

Metacomputing consists of the idea of connecting geographically distributed high performance computing resources in a seamless manner. This allows a single user to access a disparate set of resources from a single machine, with little or no knowledge of the underlying connections and protocols. The primary benefits of using a metacomputing system are attaining access to resources that would otherwise be unavailable, and allowing the system to hide the complexity of resource management from the user. Two current metacomputing systems that are widely recognized as leaders in the metacomputing community are Globus and Legion. This report evaluates Globus and Legion, covering a variety of criteria, including installation, maintenance, usability, functionality, and performance.