DGAS

DGAS
Distributed Grid Accounting System

http://grid.infn.it/

Description
The Distributed Grid Accounting System (DGAS) is a full featured distributed Grid accounting toolkit. DGAS can be used to account classic Computational Usage Records like CPU Time, memory usage and so on. It can also be used as an Economic Accounting system, treating information about the cost of the jobs executed by each Grid User on the single Grid Resources.An optional module, the Price Authority, that can be used to keep track of prices assigned to computing resources is also available.

Key functionalities
Sensors available for PBS, LSF and Condor batch systems.Works with LCG, gLite and CREAM CEs.Local Site managers have full access to the Usage Records (up to single job record), archived in an RDBMS.Optional pricing of computing resources.Distributed architecture, ready for regional grid and VO accounting.Flexible deployment. Authorization policies highly customizable, with both static and VOMS based roles.CLI and WEB interface are available.

Basic site deployment

Grid
Regional grid 2
Distributed architectureready for regional grid and VO accounting
Regional grid 1
Grid Manager
HLR2
HLR2
Regional grid manager
Regional grid manager
HLR2
VO 1
VO 2
HLR2
HLR2
VO1 Records
VO2 Records
ALL VOs Records

Flexibility
VO managers can perform queries on both general purpose or VO specific HLRs.

Authorization levels are highly customizable. Static or VOMS based mappings are available.

Little VOs do not need to have dedicated accounting servers.

Grid
Regional grid 2
Possibility to deploy clouds of accounting servers, ensuring performance, redundancy and high availability
Regional grid 1
Grid Manager
HLR2
HLR2
Regional grid manager
Regional grid manager
HLR2
VO 1
HLR2
HLR2
HLR2

Pricing and economic accounting
An optional module allows to store in a RDBMS prices assigned to computing resources.Historical values of assigned prices are kept in the database. This ensures correct price is assigned to long lived jobs. That is, the price assigned to the resource is the one decided upon job submission, even if the price for the resource is changed during the job life-cycle.If a site-manager needs, DGAS can be configured to retrieve the resource price and assign a job for each job. The cost of the job is computed using a formula that can be defined by the system manager taking into account the usage consumption and the resource price.

Pricing and economic accounting however are not key functionalities in HEP and scientific computing. Further R&D is needed. Real use cases would help defining the set of functionalities to implement.