Load sharing improves performance of distributed systems by distributing load from heavilyloaded nodes to lightly-loaded nodes in the system. We consider two basic dynamic load sharing policies: sender-initiated and receiver-initiated. In the sender-initiated policy, a heavily-loaded node attempts to transfer work to a lightly-loaded node and in the receiver-initiated policy a lightlyloaded node attempts to get work from a heavily-loaded node. In most previous studies, the firstcome/first-served node scheduling policy has been used. In addition, analysis and simulations in these studies have been done under the assumption that service times and inter-arrival times of jobs are exponentially distributed. The behaviour of these policies is not clear when these assumptions are relaxed. We report the sensitivity of the performance of the sender-initiated and receiverinitiated policies to node scheduling policy, variance in service times, and variance in inter-arrival times. Our objective is to provide an intuitive understanding of the behaviour of these policies that transcends specific system and workload models and parameter values used.
Dandamudi REF addressed dynamic load sharing in distributed systems and established that load sharing improves performance by moving work from heavily loaded nodes to lightly loaded nodes.
Sensitivity Evaluation of Dynamic Load Sharing in Distributed Systems
Computer Science