Provide Virtual Distributed Environments for Grid computing on demand

Grid users always expect to meet some challenges to employ Grid resources, such as customized computing environment and QoS support. In this paper, we propose a new methodology for Grid computing – to use virtual machines as computing resources and provide Virtual Distributed Environments (VDE) for Grid users. It is declared that employing virtual environment for Grid computing can bring various advantages, for instance, computing environment customization, QoS guarantee and easy management. A light weight Grid middleware, Grid Virtualization Engine, is developed accordingly to provide functions of building virtual environment for Grids. We also present a typical use case, on-demand build a virtual e-Science infrastructure to justify the methodology.