Online execution time prediction for computationally intensive applications with periodic progress updates

The effectiveness of distributed execution of computationally intensive applications (jobs) largely depends on the quality of the applied scheduling approach. However, most of the existing non-trivial scheduling algorithms rely on prior knowledge or on prediction of application parameters, such as execution time, size of input and output, dependencies, etc., to assign applications to the available computational resources. A major issue is that these parameters are hard to determine in advance, especially if the end user does not possess an extensive history of previous application runs. In this work we propose an online method for execution time prediction of applications, for which execution progress can be collected at run-time. Using dynamic progress information, the total job execution time can be predicted using extrapolation. However, the predictions achieved by extrapolation are far from precise and often vary over time as a result of changing application dynamics and varying resource load. Therefore, to compute the actual job execution time we match a number of predefined prediction evolution models against the consecutive extrapolations, by adopting nonlinear curve-fitting. The ??best-fit?? coefficients allow for more accurate execution time prediction. The predictions made are used to enhance a dynamic scheduling algorithm for workflows introduced in our earlier work. The scheduling algorithm is run with and without curve-fitting, showing a performance improvement of up to 15% in the former case.     

Adaptive Task Checkpointing and Replication: Toward Efficient Fault-Tolerant Grids

A grid is a distributed computational and storage environment often composed of heterogeneous autonomously managed subsystems. As a result, varying resource availability becomes commonplace, often resulting in loss and delay of executing jobs. To ensure good grid performance, fault tolerance should be taken into account. Commonly utilized techniques for providing fault tolerance in distributed systems are periodic job checkpointing and replication. While very robust, both techniques can delay job execution if inappropriate checkpointing intervals and replica numbers are chosen. This paper introduces several heuristics that dynamically adapt the above mentioned parameters based on information on grid status to provide high job throughput in the presence of failure while reducing the system overhead. Furthermore, a novel fault-tolerant algorithm combining checkpointing and replication is presented. The proposed methods are evaluated in a newly developed grid simulation environment dynamic scheduling in distributed environments (DSiDE), which allows for easy modeling of dynamic system and job behavior. Simulations are run employing workload and system parameters derived from logs that were collected from several large-scale parallel production systems. Experiments have shown that adaptive approaches can considerably improve system performance, while the preference for one of the solutions depends on particular system characteristics, such as load, job submission patterns, and failure frequency.