Data Transfers in the Grid: Workload Analysis of Globus GridFTP

One of the basic services in grids is the transfer of data between remote machines. Files may be transferred at the explicit request of the user or as part of delegated resource management services, such as data replication or job scheduling. GridFTP is an important tool for such data transfers since it builds on the common FTP protocol, has a large user base with multiple implementations, and it uses the GSI security model that allows delegated operations. This paper presents a workload analysis of the implementation of the GridFTP protocol provided by the Globus Toolkit. The authors studied more than 1.5 years of traces reported from all over the world by Globus GridFTP installed components.