Tails in the cloud: a survey and taxonomy of straggler management within large-scale cloud data centres

Abstract

Cloud computing systems are splitting compute- and data-intensive jobs into smaller tasks to execute them in a parallel manner using clusters to improve execution time. However, such systems at increasing scale are exposed to stragglers, whereby abnormally slow running tasks executing within a job substantially affect job performance completion. Such stragglers are a direct threat towards attaining fast execution of data-intensive jobs within cloud computing. Researchers have proposed an assortment of different mechanisms, frameworks, and management techniques to detect and mitigate stragglers both proactively and reactively. In this paper, we present a comprehensive review of straggler management techniques within large-scale cloud data centres. We provide a detailed taxonomy of straggler causes, as well as proposed management and mitigation techniques based on straggler characteristics and properties. From this systematic review, we outline several outstanding challenges and potential directions of possible future work for straggler research.