File transfer in Grid applications at deployment, execution and retrieval

In this article a three staged file transfer approach for the Grid is proposed. File transfer in the Grid can take place at three stages: deployment, user application execution, and retrieval (post-execution). Each stage has it's own environmental requirements, and therefore different techniques must be applied. The contributions presented in this article can be grouped in two. First, the integration of heterogeneous resource acquisition and file transfer protocols. This allows on-the-fly deployment and retrieval of files. Secondly, an asynchronous file transfer mechanism based on active objects, wait-by-necessity, and automatic continuation. The proposed file transfer model has been implemented using the ProActive middleware. ProActive provides, among others, a Grid infrastructure abstraction using deployment descriptors, and a programming model based on active objects with transparent futures. Finally, the proposed file transfer model is benchmarked and validated with a real case study: BLAST.

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