1. Introduction
Determining whether a Grid is up in the face of complex Grid software deployments can be difficult and depends on the types of applications and users that utilize it. By detailing a set of software, services, and features that should be available on a Grid in a machine-readable format, a Grid can be tested periodically by an automated system to verify its health and usability to users. To this end, we have developed Inca as a flexible framework to perform periodic, user-level functionality testing and performance measurement of Grid systems. It includes mechanisms to schedule the execution of information gathering scripts, and to collect, archive, publish, and display data
The architecture of Inca and a description of its components is shown in the below figures.
| A reporter is an executable program that tests or measures some aspect of the system or installed software. |
| A report is the output of a reporter and is a XML document complying to the reporter schema in Section 8.2.1. |
| A suite specifies a set of reporters to execute on selected resources, their configuration, and frequency of execution. |
| A reporter repository contains a collection of reporters and is available via an URL. |
| A reporter manager is responsible for managing the schedule and execution of reporters on a single resource. |
| A agent is a server that implements the configuration specified by the Inca Administrator. |
| incat is a GUI used by the Inca administrator to control and configure the Inca deployment on a set of resources. |
| A depot is a server that is responsible for storing the data produced by reporters. |
| A data consumer is typically a web page client that queries a depot for data and displays it in a user-friendly format. |
