The concept of grid computing emerged with the appearance of high-speed network. Effective grid worker (i.e., computing resource) selection mechanism is important to achieve reliable grid computing system since each worker participate in grid computing is heterogeneous. In this paper, we suggest a credible worker selection mechanism that maximizes grid computing performance by allocating appropriate tasks to each grid worker. Diverse workers can be used efficiently by grid applications through the ranking process of worker's credibility. Initially, the rank of each grid worker's credibility is decided considering static information only such as CPU speed, RAM size, storage capacity and network bandwidth. And then, the rank is refined by using dynamic information such as failure rate, turn around time provided after the task is completed, and correctness of the return value. In the experiments, we find that the proposed mechanism provides improved grid computing performance with high credibility.

In this study, a performance isolation mechanism based on a fuzzy control technique is developed in such a way that ambiguous situations caused when estimating the workload of cluster-based web servers, client request rates, and dynamic request rates can be represented effectively. The proposed mechanism involving a fuzzy-based technique is compared with a non-fuzzy technique in terms of the response time in the 95th percentile. Experiments showed that the proposed technique improves the performance of web servers that provide differentiated services.

To understand the characteristics of a multimedia service, such as the large volume of data transfer and real-time constraints, it is necessary to have a performance evaluation tool for an HDD. Our HDD simulator is running on a PC operated on FreeBSD UNIX OS. We first investigate the seek time and the sustained rate of HDDs and then evaluate the performance of an HDD for an experimental VOD system. Applying the experimental results, we find the bottleneck of an HDD, and then suggest what HDDs are to be selected for a VOD system.