Performance Analysis of Load Balancing Algorithms

Load balancing is the process of improving the performance of a parallel and distributed system through a redistribution of load among the processors [1] [5]. In this paper we present the performance analysis of various load balancing algorithms based on different parameters, considering two typical load balancing approaches static and dynamic. The analysis indicates that static and dynamic both types of algorithm can have advancements as well as weaknesses over each other. Deciding type of algorithm to be implemented will be based on type of parallel applications to solve. The main purpose of this paper is to help in design of new algorithms in future by studying the behavior of various existing algorithms.

Authors:

• Sandeep Sharma
• Sarabjit Singh
• Meenakshi Sharma

Keywords:

• Load balancing (LB)
• workload
• distributed systems
• Static Load balancing
• Dynamic Load Balancing

References:

[1] G. R. Andrews, D. P. Dobkin, and P. J. Downey, "Distributed allocation
with pools of servers," in ACM SIGACT-SIGOPS Symp. Principles of
Distributed Computing, Aug. 1982, pp. 73-83.
[2] S. Malik, "Dynamic Load Balancing in a Network of Workstation",
95.515 Research Report, 19 November, 2000.
[3] Derek L. Eager, Edward D. Lazowska , John Zahorjan, "Adaptive load
sharing in homogeneous distributed systems", IEEE Transactions on
Software Engineering, v.12 n.5, p.662-675, May 1986.
[4] H.S. Stone, "Critical Load Factors in Two-Processor Distributed
Systems," IEEE Trans. Software Eng., vol. 4, no. 3, May 1978.
[5] Zhong Xu, Rong Huang, "Performance Study of Load Balancing
Algorithms in Distributed Web Server Systems", CS213 Parallel and
Distributed Processing Project Report.
[6] R. Motwani and P. Raghavan, "Randomized algorithms", ACM
Computing Surveys (CSUR), 28(1):33-37, 1996
[7] Y.Wang and R. Morris, "Load balancing in distributed systems," IEEE
Trans. Computing. C-34, no. 3, pp. 204-217, Mar. 1985.
[8] M. Zaki, W. Li, and S. Parthasarathy. "Customized dynamic load
balancing for a network of workstations". Journal of Parallel and
Distributed Computing: Special Issue on Performance Evaluation,
Scheduling, and Fault Tolerance, June 1997.
[9] S.P. Dandamudi, "Sensitivity evaluation of dynamic load sharing in
distributed systems", IEEE Concurrency 6 (3) (1998) 62-72.
[10] P. L. McEntire, J. G. O'Reilly, and R. E. Larson, Distributed Computing:
Concepts and Implementations. New York: IEEE Press, 1984.
[11] L. Rudolph, M. Slivkin-Allalouf, E. Upfal. A Simple Load Balancing
Scheme for Task Allocation in Parallel Machines. In Proceedings of the
3rd ACM Symposium on Parallel Algorithms and Architectures, pp.
237-245, July 1991.
[12] William Leinberger, George Karypis, Vipin Kumar, "Load Balancing
Across Near-Homogeneous Multi-Resource Servers", 0-7695-0556-
2/00, 2000 IEEE.