Resource Allocation using Virtual Clusters

TL;DR

This paper explores resource allocation in parallel computing using virtual machine technology, formalizing the problem, proposing heuristics, and evaluating their effectiveness through simulation.

Contribution

It introduces heuristic algorithms for resource allocation with virtual clusters and evaluates their performance, highlighting an efficient approach for near-optimal solutions.

Findings

One heuristic algorithm achieves high efficiency and optimal resource allocation.

Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithms.

The approach can be generalized by relaxing initial assumptions.

Abstract

In this report we demonstrate the potential utility of resource allocation management systems that use virtual machine technology for sharing parallel computing resources among competing jobs. We formalize the resource allocation problem with a number of underlying assumptions, determine its complexity, propose several heuristic algorithms to find near-optimal solutions, and evaluate these algorithms in simulation. We find that among our algorithms one is very efficient and also leads to the best resource allocations. We then describe how our approach can be made more general by removing several of the underlying assumptions.