Dynamic Resource Management On Distributed Systems Using Reconfigurable Applications

Efficient management of distributed resources, under conditions of
unpredictable and varying workload, requires enforcement of dynamic
resource management policies. Execution of such policies requires a
relatively fine grain control over the resources allocated to jobs in
the system. Although this is a difficult task using conventional job
management and program execution models, reconfigurable applications
can be used to make it viable. With reconfigurable applications, it is
possible to dynamically change, during program execution,
the number of concurrently executing tasks of an application as well as
the resources allocated. Thus, reconfigurable applications can adapt
to internal changes in resource requirements and to external changes
affecting available resources. In this paper, we discuss dynamic
management of resources on distributed systems with the help of
reconfigurable applications. We first characterize reconfigurable
parallel applications. We then present a new programming model for
reconfigurable applications and the Distributed Resource Management
System (DRMS), an integrated environment for the design, development,
execution, and resource scheduling of reconfigurable applications.
Experiments were conducted to verify the functionality and performance
of application reconfiguration under DRMS. A detailed breakdown of the
costs in reconfiguration are presented with respect to several
different applications. Our results indicate that application
reconfiguration is effective under DRMS and can be beneficial in
improving individual application performance as well as overall system
performance. We observe a significant reduction in average job
response time and an improvement in overall system utilization.

By: Jose E. Moriera, Vijay K. Naik

Published in: RC20890 in 1997

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