The limited performance benefits of migrating active processes for load sharing

Abstract

Load sharing in a distributed system is the process of transparently sharing workload among the nodes in the system to achieve improved performance. In non-migratory load sharing, jobs may not be transferred once they have commenced execution. In load sharing with migration , on the other hand, jobs in execution may be interrupted, moved to other nodes, and then resumed. In this paper we examine the performance benefits offered by migratory load sharing beyond those offered by non-migratory load sharing. We show that while migratory load sharing can offer modest performance benefits under some fairly extreme conditions, there are no conditions under which migration yields major performance benefits.