Exploiting idle cycles to execute data mining applications on clusters of PCs

In this paper we present and evaluate Inhambu, a distributed object-oriented system that supports the execution of data mining applications on clusters of PCs and workstations. This system provides a resource management layer, built on the top of Java/RMI, that supports the execution of the data mining tool called Weka. We evaluate the performance of Inhambu by means of several experiments in homogeneous, heterogeneous and non-dedicated clusters. The obtained results are compared with those achieved by a similar system named Weka-Parallel. Inhambu outperforms its counterpart for coarse grain applications, mainly for heterogeneous and non-dedicated clusters. Also, our system provides additional advantages such as application checkpointing, support for dynamic aggregation of hosts to the cluster, automatic restarting of failed tasks, and a more effective usage of the cluster. Therefore, Inhambu is a promising tool for efficiently executing real-world data mining applications. The software is delivered at the project’s web site available at http://incubadora.fapesp.br/projects/inhambu/. 2006 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.