Communication cost effective scheduling policies of nonclairvoyant jobs with load balancing in a grid

Abstract

Effective load distribution is of great importance at grids, which are complex heterogeneous distributed systems. In this paper we study site allocation scheduling of nonclairvoyant jobs in a 2-level heterogeneous grid architecture. Three scheduling policies at grid level which utilize site load information are examined. The aim is the reduction of site load information traffic, while at the same time mean response time of jobs and fairness in utilization between the heterogeneous sites are of great interest. A simulation model is used to evaluate performance under various conditions. Simulation results show that considerable decrement in site load information traffic and utilization fairness can be achieved at the expense of a slight increase in response time.