A user-centric execution environment for CineGrid workloads

• We describe the general challenges user face in heterogeneous it infrastructure environments and identify their instance in the case of CineGrid.
• We characterize the most frequent workloads in the CineGrid collaboration including their infrastructure resource requirements.
• We present the design and implementation of a system which simplifies workload resource definition by leveraging semantic web description languages for infrastructure.
• We provide Pareto-optimal resource configurations for workload execution.

The abundance and heterogeneity of IT resources available, together with the ability to dynamically scale applications poses significant usability issues to users. Without understanding the performance profile of available resources users are unable to efficiently scale their applications in order to meet performance objectives. High quality media collaborations, like CineGrid, are one example of such diverse environments where users can leverage dynamic infrastructures to move and process large amounts of data. This paper describes our user-centric approach to executing high quality media processing workloads over dynamic infrastructures. Our main contribution is the CGtoolkit  environment, an integrated system which aids users cope with the infrastructure complexity and large data sets specific to the digital cinema domain.