Home // International Journal On Advances in Software, volume 3, numbers 1 and 2, 2010 // View article

A Practical Approach to Distributed Metascheduling

Authors:
Janko Heilgeist
Thomas Soddemann
Harald Richter

Keywords: Grid computing; metascheduling; resource discovery; decision making

Abstract:
The paper describes a metascheduler for highperformance computing (HPC) grids that is build upon a distributed architecture. It is modelled around cooperating peers represented by the local proxies deployed by each participating site. These proxies exchange job descriptions between themselves with the aim of improving user-, administration-, and grid-defined metrics. Relevant metrics can include, e.g., reduced job runtimes, improved resource utilization, and increased job turnover. The metascheduler uses peer-to-peer algorithms to discover under-utilized resources and unserviced jobs. A selection is made based on a simplified variant of the Analytic Hierarchy Process that we adapted to the special requirements imposed by the Grid. It enables geographically distributed stakeholders to participate in the decision and supports dynamic evaluation of the necessary utility values. An exemplary decision making process is presented, where user and resource provider jointly decide upon the resource where a job will be computed. Finally, we identify four intrinsic problems that obstruct the implementation of metaschedulers in general.

Pages: 280 to 293

Copyright: Copyright (c) to authors, 2010. Used with permission.

Publication date: September 5, 2010

Published in: journal

ISSN: 1942-2628