Agent-based grid load balancing using performance-driven task scheduling

Load balancing is a key concern when developing parallel and distributed computing applications. The emergence of computational grids extends this problem, where issues of cross-domain and large-scale scheduling must also be considered. In this paper an agent-based grid management infrastructure is coupled with a performance-driven task scheduler that has been developed for local grid load balancing. Each grid scheduler utilises predictive application performance data and an iterative heuristic algorithm to engineer local load balancing across multiple processing nodes. At a higher level, a hierarchy of homogeneous agents are used to represent multiple grid resources. Agents cooperate with each other to balance workload in the global grid environment using service advertisement and discovery mechanisms. A case study is included with corresponding experimental results to demonstrate that both local schedulers and agents contribute to overall grid load balancing, which significantly improves grid application execution performance and resource utilisation.