A load balancing model for grid environment

Workload and resource management are two essential functions provided at the service level of the Grid software. To improve the global throughput of these environments, effective and efficient load balancing algorithms are fundamentally important. Although load balancing problem in classical distributed systems has been intensively studied, new challenges in Grid computing still make it an interesting topic, and many research projects are under way. This is due to the Grid characteristics and to the complex nature of the problem. This paper presents a task load balancing model in Grid environment. First we propose a tree-based model to represent Grid architecture in order to manage workload. This model is characterized by three main features: (i) it is hierarchical; (ii) it supports heterogeneity and scalability; and, (iii) it is totally independent from any Grid physical architecture. Second, we develop a hierarchical load balancing strategy to balance tasks among Grid resources. The main characteristics of the proposed strategy are: (i) it uses a task-level load balancing; (ii) it privileges local tasks transfer to reduce communication cost; and, (iii) it is a distributed strategy with local decision making.