Allocating Non-Real-Time and Soft Real-Time Jobs in Multiclusters

Authors

Ligang He, University of WarwickFollow
Stephen A. Jarvis, University of WarwickFollow
Daniel P. Spooner, University of WarwickFollow
Hong Jiang, University of Nebraska-LincolnFollow
Donna N. Dillenberger, IBM T.J. Watson Research CenterFollow
Graham R. Nudd, University of WarwickFollow

Document Type

Article

Date of this Version

2-2006

Comments

Published in IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON PARALLEL AND DISTRIBUTED SYSTEMS, VOL. 17, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2006. Digital Object Identifier: 10.1109/TPDS.2006.18 Copyright 2006 IEEE. Used by permission.

Abstract

This paper addresses workload allocation techniques for two types of sequential jobs that might be found in multicluster systems, namely, non-real-time jobs and soft real-time jobs. Two workload allocation strategies, the Optimized mean Response Time (ORT) and the Optimized mean Miss Rate (OMR), are developed by establishing and numerically solving two optimization equation sets. The ORT strategy achieves an optimized mean response time for non-real-time jobs, while the OMR strategy obtains an optimized mean miss rate for soft real-time jobs over multiple clusters. Both strategies take into account average system behaviors (such as the mean arrival rate of jobs) in calculating the workload proportions for individual clusters and the workload allocation is updated dynamically when the change in the mean arrival rate reaches a certain threshold. The effectiveness of both strategies is demonstrated through theoretical analysis. These strategies are also evaluated through extensive experimental studies and the results show that when compared with traditional strategies, the proposed workload allocation schemes significantly improve the performance of job scheduling in multiclusters, both in terms of the mean response time (for non-real-time jobs) and the mean miss rate (for soft real-time jobs).