Randomized hydrodynamic load balancing approach

Abstract

Load balancing is performed to achieve the optimal use of the existing computational resources as much as possible whereby none of the resources remains idle while some other resources are being utilized. Balanced load distribution can be achieved by the immigration of the load from the source nodes which have surplus workload to the comparatively lightly loaded destination nodes. Applying load balancing during run time is called dynamic load balancing (DLB). DLB can be realized both in a direct or iterative manner according to the execution node selection. In iterative methods, the final destination node is determined through several iteration steps, while in direct methods it is selected in one step. This paper presents the randomized hydrodynamic load balancing (RHLB) method which is a hybrid method that takes advantage of both direct and iterative methods. Using random load migration as a direct method, RHLB approach intends to solve the problems derived from the exceptional instantaneous load rises, and diffuse the surplus workload to relatively free resources. Besides, using hydrodynamic approach as an iterative method, RHLB aims to consume minimum possible system resources to balance the common workload distributions. The results of the experiments designate that, RHLB outruns other iterative based methods in terms of both balance quality and the total time of the load balancing process. © 2008 IEEE. © 2008 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.