A novel approach to allocating QoS-constrained workflow-based jobs in a multi-cluster grid

Abstract

Clusters are increasingly interconnected to form multi-cluster systems, which are becoming popular for scientific computation. Grid users often submit their applications in the form of workflows with certain Quality of Service (QoS) requirements imposed on the workflows. These workflows detail the composition of Grid services and the level of service required from the Grid. This paper addresses workload allocation techniques for Grid workflows. We model a resource within a cluster as a G/G/1 queue and minimise failures (QoS requirement violation) of jobs by solving a mixed-integer non-linear program (MINLP). The novel approach is evaluated through an experimental simulation and the results confirm that the proposed workload allocation strategy not only provides QoS guarantee but also performs considerably better in terms of satisfying QoS requirements of Grid workflows than reservation-based scheduling algorithms. © 2006 ACM.