Gridification of collaborative audiovisual organizations through the MediaGrid framework

In this paper, we discuss a use case for employing Grid technology in a media production/distribution environment. This type of environment is faced with the challenges of storing, retrieving and processing massive amounts of digital multimedia data in a reliable and highly performing manner, preventing Grid technology from being introduced in a straightforward way. We therefore propose the use of a MediaGrid framework, providing support for content/resource sharing and advanced collaborative working. This MediaGrid framework and its components are discussed in detail, and, since the proposed MediaGrid is tailored to the needs of media production/distribution companies, we introduce these companies’ profiles along with their typical user-task work flows, media application characteristics and service requirements. In order to experiment with various resource and topology setups and be able to develop and evaluate scheduling and QoS management algorithms that are tuned to the needs of these companies, we have developed MediaNSG, an advanced MediaGrid simulator which extends the ns-2 network simulator. MediaNSG’s inner workings are detailed and finally, some MediaNSG proof-of-concept simulations are presented.