In large-scale collaborative computing, users and resource providers organize various Virtual Organizations (VOs) to share resources and services. A VO organizes other sub-VOs for the purpose of achieving the VO goal, which forms hierarchical VO environments. VO participants agree upon a certain policies, such as resource sharing amount or user accesses. In this letter, we provide an optimal resource sharing mechanism in hierarchical VO environments under resource sharing agreements. The proposed algorithm enhances resource utilization and reduces mean response time of each user.

A novel adaptive reputation-based virtual organization formation is proposed. It restrains the bad performers effectively based on the consideration of the global experience of the evaluator and evaluates the direct trust relation between two grid nodes accurately by consulting the previous trust value rationally. It also consults and improves the reputation evaluation process in PathTrust model by taking account of the inter-organizational trust relationship and combines it with direct and recommended trust in a weighted way, which makes the algorithm more robust against collusion attacks. Additionally, the proposed algorithm considers the perspective of the VO creator and takes required VO services as one of the most important fine-grained evaluation criterion, which makes the algorithm more suitable for constructing VOs in grid environments that include autonomous organizations. Simulation results show that our algorithm restrains the bad performers and resists against fake transaction attacks and badmouth attacks effectively. It provides a clear advantage in the design of a VO infrastructure.