With offices nowadays have started using computers, we are also faced with a challenge to maximize the utilization of computing resources offered by each computer and minimize cost. With many computers, we are faced with many idle
resources. Jobs can be distributed out to idle servers or even idle desktops. Many of these resources remain idle during off office hours or even during office hours with many users under utilizing the computing as well as memory resources. We can manage policies allowing jobs to go only go to computers that are free of resources allowing others to run normally and hence maximize the throughput as well as minimize cost. Our proposed model not only utilizes resources to optimum but also makes the architecture more modular, adaptive, provides dynamic fail over recovery and linear scalability.
Keywords : JINI, javaspace, cluster, Space
1. Introduction
As the size of any organization increases, with it increases the issue of managing the increased resources. A little foresightedness may result saving huge cost for the organization. There might arise a question of managing computer clusters for carrying out computational task with more efficiency. In this paper we shall focus on the prototype cluster management using JINI, and also show how to setup a cluster management system that performs resource sharing. Traditional architectures normally focus on clientserver or peer to peer interaction model but our focus shall be upon a completely new architecture “Space based Architecture”. The space based idea
has several advantages compared to its counterparts. A space based architecture is said to be more robust because one agent failing will not bring down the whole system as is the case with clientserver model. Replication and mirroring of persistent spaces permits communication regardless network failure. Communication between peers is anonymous and asynchronous which makes computers in the cluster to work together to solve a problem collectively. These attributes of space based architecture enables us to make an adaptive cluster. We will particularly focus on managing clusters in an adaptive manner, where the increase or decrease in the number of peers wont create any problem to the overall space. Our approach will be based on the one of the services of JINI the “javaspace”.
2. JINI and JavaSpaces
JINI technology is a service oriented architecture that defines a programming model which both exploits and extends the ability of java technology to enable the creation of distributed systems consisting of federations of well behaved networked services and clients. JINI technology can be used to build adaptive network systems that are scalable, evolvable and flexible as typically required in dynamic distributed systems [1]. JINI enables computers to find each other and use each others services on the network without prior information about each other or the protocols used. To make Jini selfhealing,leases are utilized. Nearly every registration or resource must be leased, that is, it must periodically be confirmed that the registered resource is alive or that there is still interest in a resource.
If the lease is not renewed before its expiration, the resource or registration becomes unavailable. This provides a form of distributed garbage collection, where only healthy resources continue to be published.
2.1 An overview of JINI Infrastructure
Jini comes with several standard infrastructure components out of the box. To achieve the nonfunctional requirements (NFRs) of performance, resiliency, and scalability, multiple instances of these components run simultaneously on different machines.
The standard Jini services are:
· Lookup Service : The lookup service, named reggie, is the first among equals of Jini services.
All services in a Jini architecture register with the lookup service to make themselves available to other services. All initial access to other services is via the lookup service, after which clients bind directly.
· Class Server : The class server, a simple HTTP daemon, eliminates the coupling between clients and service implementations. Clients deal with interfaces. If a particular implementation class is required, it is downloaded transparently.
· Transaction Manager : Distributed transactions support is provided by the transaction manager service called mahalo.
· JavaSpace Services with a requirement to share information with other services do so through a JavaSpace. The reference implementation of the JavaSpace is named outrigger.
2.2 JavaSpace technology
The JavaSpaces technology is a highlevel tool for building distributed applications, and it can also be used as a coordination tool. A marked departure from classic distributed models that rely on message passing or RMI, the JavaSpaces model views a distributed application as a collection of processes that cooperate through the flow of objects into and out of one or more spaces. This programming model has its roots in Linda, a coordination language developed by Dr. David Gelernter at Yale niversity. However, no knowledge of Linda is required to understand and use JavaSpaces technology [2].The dominant model of computation in distributed computing is the ClientServer model. This model is based on the assumption that local procedure calls are the same as remote procedure calls. Javaspaces overcome the problems of synchronization, latency and partial failure, inherent in distributed systems, by providing loosely coupled interactions between the components of distributed systems. Javaspace processes communicate through a space, not than directly. Communication between processes on different physical machines is asynchronous and free from the main limitation of the traditional client/server model, when client/server communication requires simultaneous presence on network both parts client and server. Sender and receiver in JavaSpace don't need to be synchronized and can interact when network is available. In a distributed application, JavaSpaces technology acts as a virtual space between providers and requesters of network resources or objects. This allows participants in a distributed solution to exchange tasks, requests, and information in the form of Java
technology based objects[3]. The javaspace transactional mangement and notify feature makes it easier to build a dynamic cluster management framework. In particular it addresses the dynamic cluster problem where nodes can depart and join the cluster at any time.
2.3 Leasing
One of the important feature of Jini is the concept of leasing. All resources in a Jini system are leased,including proxy records in the lookup service, transactions, and, of course, memory in a JavaSpace.When a lease expires, the resource is recovered and made available to other components. This prevents resource accretion, a common problem in distributed systems. Leases can be renewed explicitly, or implicitly through a lease renewal manager. In the interests of simplicity, the example below uses leases that last "forever." This is obviously inappropriate for a
production system[4].
2.4 The Entry Interface
All objects that can be stored in a JavaSpace must implement the Entry interface. Entry is a simple tag interface that does not add any methods but does extend Serializable. Like JavaBeans, all Entry implementations must provide a public constructor that takes no arguments. Unlike JavaBeans, all of the data members of an Entry must be public. In production Jini systems, the public data members are a nonissue because of common techniques like the envelope letter idiom. The Entry implementation acts as an envelope or wrapper around the "real" payload, which may be any serializable Java object. The only public data members exposed are those required for the templatebased matching of the JavaSpaces API[5].
3. JavaSpace based cluster mangement
At the focus of our system is a working space and entries that cluster nodes can write to the space.These entries are a Join entry and a Depart entry. The space itself is assumed to be run on a host that forms the nucleus of the cluster and in fact for the work reported here we assume this host and its space stay up. We are working on the problem of making this space system properly persistent and robust
against temporary failure. It is further assumed that the space hosting node is well known to other nodes that participate in the cluster. This seems reasonable assumption for a cluster within an administrative boundary
3.1 Architecture Description
A JavaSpaces service holds entries, each of which is a typed group of objects expressed in a class that implements the interface net.jini.core.entry.Entry. Once an entry is written into a JavaSpaces service, it can be used in future lookup operations. Looking up entries is performed using templates, which are
entry objects that have some or all of their fields set to specified values that must be matched exactly. All remaining fields, which are not used in the lookup, are left as wildcards.
There are two lookup operations: read() and take(). The read() method returns either an entry that matches the template or an indication that no match was found. The take() method operates like read(), but if a match is found, the entry is removed from the space. Distributed events can be used by requesting a JavaSpaces service to notify you when an entry that matches the specified template is written into the space. Note that each entry in the space can be taken at most once, but two or more entries may have the exact same values. Using JavaSpaces technology, distributed applications are modeled as a flow of objects between participants, which is different from classic distributed models such as RMIs. Figure 1 indicates what a JavaSpaces technology based application looks like. A client can interact with as many JavaSpaces services as needed. Clients perform operations that map entries to templates onto JavaSpaces services. Such operations can be singleton or contained in a transaction so that all or none of the operationstake place. Notifications go to event catches, which can be either clients or proxies for clients.
4. Javaspace Realated concepts
4.1 Transactions
The JavaSpaces API uses the package net.jini.core.transaction to provide basic atomic
transactions that group multiple operations across multiple JavaSpaces services into a bundle that acts as a single atomic operation. Either all modifications within the transactions will be applied or none will, regardless of whether the transaction spans one or more operations or one or more JavaSpaces services. Note that transactions can span multiple spaces and participants in general.A read(), write(), or take() operation that has a null transaction acts as if it were in a committed transaction that contained that operation. As an example, a take() with a null
transaction parameter performs as if a transaction was created, the take() was performed under that transaction, and then the transaction was committed.
4.2 The Jini Outrigger JavaSpaces Service
The Jini Technology Starter Kit comes with the package com.sun.jini.outrigger, which
provides an implementation of a JavaSpaces technologyenabled
service. You can run it two ways:
· As a transient space that loses its state between executions: Use
com.sun.jini.outrigger.TransientOutriggerImpl.
· As a persistent space that maintains state between executions: Use
com.sun.jini.outrigger.PersistentOutriggerImpl.
The TransientOutriggerImpl can be run only as a nonactivatable server, but the
PersistentOutriggerImpl can be run as either an activatable or nonactivatable server.
4.3 Distributed Data structure in JavaSpace
With JavaSpace it is also possible to organize objects in form of a tree structure or an array. Since remote processes may access these structures concurrently, they are called distributed data structures. A channel in JavaSpaces terminology is a distributed data structure that organizes messages in a queue. Several processes can write messages to the end of the channel, and several processes can read or take messages from the beginning of it. A channel is made up of two pointer
objects, the head and the tail, which contain the numbers of the first and the last entry in the channel(Figure 2). It is possible to use several such channels, giving all Actors associated with a space the possibility to handle messages in a FIFO fair manner. Channels may also be bounded, meaning that an upper limit can be set for how many messages a channel may contain.
4.4 Master Worker pattern
The MasterWorker Pattern (sometimes called MasterSlave pattern) is used for parallel processing and is the basis pattern to work with javaspace. It follows a simple approach that allows applications to perform simultaneous processing across multiple machines or processes via a Master and multiple Workers. The Master hands out units of work to the "space", and these are read, processed and written back to the space by the workers. In a typical environment there are several "spaces", several masters
and many workers; the workers are usually designed to be generic, i.e. they can take any unit of work from the space and process the task.
5. Discussions and Conclusions
In this paper we have discussed using JINI/javaspace technology to providing clustering supporting.The approach presented is useful in places which requires clusters to be set up to perform resource intensive works, like data processing or computing works. Our model can be realized using JINI/javaspace technology which are open source technologies and hence can be cost effective as compared to other proprietary solutions. As with government offices, this approach can prove
beneficial as it provides effective solutions to clustering issues like scalability, fault tolerance,adaptability and utilization of resources. Creating adaptive systems in dynamic environments where services and clients come and go all the time and system components may dynamically be added and removed is a complex task. JavaSpaces has several features that can ease this task, including its ability to provide asynchronous and uncoupled communication in time, space and destination based on
associative addressing. Since a JavaSpace stores objects, it is a simple means of distributing both messages and agent behavior. Our space based architecture utilizes these possibilities together with the actor role abstraction to simplify the creation of adaptive systems. The architecture consists of three main types of agents that interact asynchronously through the space.
6 .References
[1] http://www.jini.org/wiki/Main_Page
[2] http://java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/tools/JavaSpaces/
[3] http://www.javafaq.nu/javaarticle150.
html
[4] http://www.softwarematters.org/jiniintro.
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[5] http://www.artima.com/intv/swayP.html
[6]http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/jw102000/
jw1002jiniology.
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[7]http://java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/tools/JavaSpaces/
[8]http://www.theserverside.com/tt/articles/article.tss?l=UsingJavaSpaces
[9]http://www.artima.com/lejava/articles/dynamic_clustering.html
[10]http://www.artima.com/intv/cluster2.html
[11]Grid Computing: A Practical Guide To Technology And Applications By Ahmar
Abbas,Publisher:Charles River Media
[12]http://jan.newmarch.name/java/jini/tutorial/Jini.html
[13]Grid computing Software Environment and tools By : Omer F. Rana (Editor) and Jose C. Cunha
(Editor)
[14]http://java.sun.com/developer/Books/JavaSpaces/
[15]Dynamic Cluster Configuration and Management using JavaSpaces( K.A.Hawick and H.A.James
Computer Science Division, School of Informatics)
