Resource discovery mechanisms in grid systems: A survey

•Surveys the resource discovery mechanisms used in Grid computing systems until now.•Classifies the resource discovery mechanisms into five main categories: Centralized, Decentralized, Peer to Peer, Hierarchical, and Agent based.•Provides a discussion of differentiate between considered mechanisms in terms of scalability, dynamicity, reliability and queries' attributes.•Provides directions for future research.

Grid computing systems provide a vast amount of computing resources from multiple administrative domains to reach a main objective. One of the most important challenges in these systems is to discover appropriate resource in networks. In this paper we survey the resource discovery mechanisms which have been used in Grid computing systems so far. We classify the resource discovery mechanisms into five main categories: Centralized, Decentralized, Peer to Peer, Hierarchical, and Agent based. We reviewed the major development in these five categories and outlined new challenges. This survey paper also provides a discussion of differences between considered mechanisms in terms of scalability, dynamicity, reliability and queries' attributes as well as directions for future research.