Fault-tolerant execution of large parameter sweep applications across multiple VOs with storage constraints

Applications that span multiple virtual organizations (VOs) are of great interest to the e‐science community. However, our recent attempts to execute large‐scale parameter sweep applications (PSAs) for real‐world climate studies with the Nimrod/G tool have exposed problems in the areas of fault tolerance, data storage and trust management. In response, we have implemented a task‐splitting approach that facilitates breaking up large PSAs into a sequence of dependent subtasks, improving fault tolerance; provides a garbage collection technique that deletes unnecessary data; and employs a trust delegation technique that facilitates flexible third party data transfers across different VOs. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.