Distributed Resource Management in Workstation and PC Clusters

网络和处理器技术的进步正在极大地改变工作站和个人计算机的局域集群的通信和计算能力。特别是，用提供更高吞吐量和更低延迟的较新交换网络技术取代以太网络，为操作系统提供了更好地利用网络资源的机会。本研究旨在通过分布式(集群范围)资源管理来提高应用程序的性能。该项目将开发允许有效共享所有网络资源的算法：处理器、网络、内存和磁盘存储。例如，负载较重的节点上的程序可以将空闲节点上的可用内存用于文件系统和虚拟内存后备存储，而不是磁盘，从而减少访问该数据的数据延迟。作为另一个例子，应用可以迁移到为其执行提供更好的处理环境或更好的存储环境的节点。为这种紧密耦合的系统开发算法的一个关键问题是找到合适的平衡，以便优化系统范围的性能，同时最小化由于网络范围的资源共享而导致的单个系统性能的任何降级。***

Advances in network and processor technology are greatly changing the communication and computational power of local-area clusters of workstations and personal computers. In particular, the replacement of Ethernets by newer switched network technologies, which provide both higher throughput and lower latency, presents an opportunity for operating systems to better use network resources. This research seeks to improve the performance of applications through distributed (cluster-wide) resource management. The project will develop algorithms that permit the effective sharing of all network resources: processors, network, memory, and disk storage. For example, programs on heavily- loaded nodes can use available memory on idle nodes for both file system and virtual memory backing store, rather than disk, thereby reducing the data latency on access to that data. As another example, applications may migrate to nodes that provide either a better processing environment or a better memory environment for their execution. A key issue in developing algorithms for such closely-coupled system is finding the right balance in order to optimize system-wide performance while minimizing any degradation of performance on individual systems as a result of network-wide resource sharing. ***