A Guide to Dynamic Load Balancing in Distributed Computer Systems

Load balancing is the process of redistributing the work load among nodes of the distributed system to improve both resource utilization and job response time while also avoiding a situation where some nodes are heavily loaded while others are idle or doing little work. A dynamic load balancing algorithm assumes no a priori knowledge about job behavior or the global state of the system, i.e., load balancing decisions are solely based on the current status of the system. The development of an effective dynamic load balancing algorithm involves many important issues: load estimation, load levels comparison, performance indices, system stability, amount of information exchanged among nodes, job resource requirements estimation, job’s selection for transfer, remote nodes selection, and more. This paper presents and analyses the aforementioned issues that need to be considered in the development or study of a dynamic load balancing algorithm.