Load balancing strategies for distributed computer systems

The study investigates various load balancing strategies to improve the performance of distributed computer systems. A static task allocation and a number of dynamic load balancing algorithms are proposed, and their performances evaluated through simulations. First, in the case of static load balancing, the precedence constrained scheduling heuristic is defined to effectively allocate the task systems with high communication to computation ratios onto a given set of processors. Second, the dynamic load balancing algorithms are studied using a queueing theoretic model. For each algorithm, a different load index has been used to estimate the host loads. These estimates are utilized in simple task placement heuristics to determine the probabilities for transferring tasks between every two hosts in the system. The probabilities determined in this way are used to perform dynamic load balancing in a distributed computer system. Later, these probabilities are adjusted to include the effects of inter-host communication costs. Finally, network partitioning strategies are proposed to reduce the communication overhead of load balancing algorithms in a large distributed system environment. Several host-grouping strategies are suggested to improve the performance of load balancing algorithms. This is achieved by limiting the exchange of load information messages within smaller groups of hosts while restricting the transfer of tasks to long distance remote hosts which involve high communication costs. Effectiveness of the above-mentioned algorithms is evaluated by simulations. The model developed in this study for such simulations can be used in both static and dynamic load balancing environments.