Resource co-allocation: a complementary technique that enhances performance in grid computing environment

This paper introduces an availability check technique (ACT) as a complementary technique to most resource co-allocation protocols in the literature. For a given resource co-allocation protocol, ACT tries to reduce the conflicts that happen between co-allocators when they try to allocate multiple resources simultaneously. In ACT, each job checks for the availability state of required resources and gets informed with updates each time one of the resources availability state changes until all the resources become available. Once all required resources become available a job starts applying the given resource co-allocation protocol. Two co-allocation protocols: all-or-nothing (AONP) and order-based deadlock prevention (ODP²) protocols are chosen to be the case studies to simulate the proposed technique (ACT). To simulate ACT, each job is allowed to allocate from 1 to 5 different types of resources simultaneously using a uniform distribution. The results show that applying ACT to one of the two protocols outperform the original one. The resource utilization is improved by up to 34% and 41% for AONP and ODP², respectively. The job response time is improved by up to 13% and 8% for AONP and ODP², respectively. And the communication overhead is improved by up to 96% and 94% for AONP and ODP², respectively. Also, applying ACT to AONP represents the most scalable and fully distributed scheme that outperforms original schemes (AONP and ODP²) and competes well with all other schemes presented in this paper.