Keywords

livelock, meta-scheduling, exponential, back-off

Abstract

Meta-scheduling, a process which allows a user to schedule a job across multiple sites, has a potential for livelock. Current systems avoid livelock by locking down resources at multiple sites and allowing a metascheduler to control the resources during the lock down period or by limiting job size to that which will fit on one site. The former approach leads to poor utilization; the later poses limitations on job size. This research uses BYU's Meta-scheduler (YMS) which allows jobs to be scheduled across multiple sites without the need for locking down the nodes. YMS avoids livelock through exponential back-off This research quantifies the potential for livelock, determines a suitable back-off period, and provides a structure upon which to test theoretical local. schedulers. The results show that livelock exists and, that a suitable exponential back-off not only avoids livelock but reduces the scheduling time for each job.

Original Publication Citation

Livelock Avoidance for Metaschedulers, John Jardine, Quinn Snell, Mark Clement. Proceedings of the Tenth IEEE International Symposium on High Performance Distributed Computing (HPDC-1), San Francisco, CA, August 21.