Enterprise Grid Alliance revamps reference models

The Enterprise Grid Alliance (EGA) has unveiled two new technical specifications designed to help companies better understand the basic requirements for effective grid architectures, and overcome common obstacles associated with developing and deploying enterprise grids.

The Enterprise Grid Data and Storage Provisioning report identifies the unique data and storage provisioning needs of commercial enterprise grids, and breaks down the requirements to manage interoperable grid components.

It examines whether suitable interfaces into the actual grid resources exist in applications such as asset discovery and management, data movement and backup, and policy management.

Additionally, the report provides a deeper look into the discovery, commissioning and decommissioning, and capabilities related to the service level objectives of asset management.

"The dynamic nature of grid provisioning is at constant odds with traditional storage management practices, causing many storage administrators to be conservative and often resistant to grid adoption," said Alan Yoder, chairman of the EGA's Data Provisioning Working Group and senior technical staff member at Network Appliance.

"The report sheds light on the problems and approaches intended to improve aspects of storage provisioning, which ultimately helps storage administrators mitigate risk and reap grid's benefits."

Also announced today is the Reference Model 1.5, which builds on the first version announced in May 2005. This release adds more than 50 new use cases to the model's repository.

It aims to provide additional opportunity for customers and vendors to understand the approaches and issues associated with enterprise grids. The full specification documents can be downloaded here.