Distributed usage logging for federated Grids

We present a non-intrusive solution to the increasingly important problem of shared logging for overlapping and federated Grid environments. The solution addresses three usage scenarios of hierarchical Grids, mutual cross-Grid resource utilization, and federated Cloud computing infrastructures. The approach is evaluated by extending the existing SweGrid Accounting System (SGAS) with a light-weight component that makes the system applicable to a wide range of usage scenarios. The proposed architecture is characterized by its simplicity, flexibility, and generality, and the new key component by its non-intrusiveness, flexibility, and ability to manage high load. We present requirements derived from three usage scenarios, and also include an in-depth description of the architecture and design, as well as the implementation and performance evaluation of a new component written for use with SGAS. We conclude from a performance evaluation that the sharing of usage data is not likely to be a limiting performance factor even in large-scale Grid scenarios.