A Metadata Management Model For ChinaGrid Support Platform

Grid Support Platform utilizes grid technology to integrate huge amount of heterogeneous and self-autonomous resources which are dispersed in the wide-area networks. This Grid middle-ware has a set of management tools for Grid Applications. Data management is one of the kernel services in the Grid Support Platform, which is responsible for the management of storage resources and user data, provides data access services for grid users.Metadata Management is a very important component of Data Management. It uses a uniform description to define resources to make the management and access become transparent to the users. The middle-ware of Metadata Management defines the naming rules, organizes the metadata servers and manages the distributed scale of the servers. The application strategies layer defines all kinds of management strategies for data resources and storage resources. The data resource management strategies include metadata server selection, data sharing, metadata replicas, metadata caches and so on. The storage resource management strategies include storage selection, storage sharing and so on. The Metadata Management middle-ware expands in tree-like structures. In grid environment exists many domain which are different organizations. The metadata servers in one domain are organized in a Two Fork Tree. And the root metadata servers of different domains are organized in a common Tree.The Metadata management model is platform independent. Without any management strategies, the performance test shows that the extension in one domain can balance the load of the servers. And in multiple domains, when the level of the tree is deeper, the access efficiency is lower.