Dependability in Grids

This description seems like it could apply to any traditional distributed system. However, a key difference is that many Grids will provide services that are orchestrations of multiple services, hosted on different sites and across organizational and administrative boundaries, thus raising a lot of new issues. The Globus Toolkit currently at version 4 is the accepted reference implementation for Grid-computing middleware, while Global Grid Forum members work on Grid-computing standards. But, our concern in this article is the last point in Foster's checklist. For all the work being done to provide usable Grid middleware, the subject of dependability has been strangely neglected. The community hasn't launched a large-scale effort to provide tools to help develop dependable Grid applications.