An Experimental Assessment of Resource Queue Lengths as Load Indices

Abstract

Load indices that accurately reflect the current loads at computer system resources are crucial to the success of any dynamic load balancing scheme. However, few load indices have been experimentally validated as being suitable for load balancing. We conduct such a validation study for the resource queue lengths. We find that the CPU and disk queue lengths have very high correlation to the response times of CPU and I/O bound jobs, respectively. However, for the type of system that we studied, the system load changes very rapidly, making the response time high unpredictable. Simulation results suggest that load balancing will drastically reduce load fluctuation. The CPU is by far the most heavily used resource in the systems we studied. While this is also true in many other environments, measurement studies are called for before reaching such a conclusion in other systems.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jun 01, 1986
Accession Number
ADA619314

Entities

People

  • Songnian Zhou

Organizations

  • University of California, Berkeley

Tags

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Algorithms
  • Bandwidth
  • California
  • Computer Science
  • Computers
  • Control Simulators
  • Dynamic Loads
  • Environment
  • Indicators
  • Intervals
  • Measurement
  • Networks
  • Production
  • Servers (Computer Hardware)
  • Simulations
  • Simulators
  • Steady State

Fields of Study

  • Computer science

Readers

  • Economics
  • Mathematical Modeling and Probability Theory.
  • Tribology (the study of the boundary interaction between sliding surfaces, lubrication, wear and friction).