Using Dynamic Load Balancing in Distributed Information Systems

Book excerpt: Abstract: "Networking computers has provided a great potential for performance improvement of job execution through dynamic load balancing. In effect, the literature on this subject concludes that dynamic load balancing algorithms can significantly reduce jobs waiting time. The application of these encouraging results onto real systems has proven to be difficult due to the complexity, lack of support, and lack of adequate software tools for constructing distributed load balancing systems. This paper presents the design, implementation and a performance analysis of a dynamic load balancing system. The performance evaluation is undertaken using an Office Information System (OIS) as a case study. The dynamic load balancing prototype has been developed using a distributed programming model which supports dynamic configuration. It is argued that this latter exhibits capabilities that are essential for a system operating in a changing and evolving environment. The overall system has been implemented and tested on a network on Sun4 workstations. The performance results presented are consistent over a range of experiments and clearly demonstrate the benefits gained from load balancing. It is shown that up to 60% performance improvement can be attained under a moderate workload."