Dynamic Load Balancing with Tokens

Abstract: Efficiently exploiting the resources of data centers is a complex task that requires efficient and reliable load balancing and resource allocation algorithms. The former are in charge of assigning jobs to servers upon their arrival in the system, while the latter are responsible for sharing server resources between their assigned jobs. These algorithms should take account of various constraints, such as data locality, that restrict the feasible job assignments. In this paper, we propose a token-based mechanism that efficiently balances load between servers without requiring any knowledge on job arrival rates and server capacities. Assuming a balanced fair sharing of the server resources, we show that the resulting dynamic load balancing is insensitive to the job size distribution. Its performance is compared to that obtained under the best static load balancing and in an ideal system that would constantly optimize the resource utilization.