Dynamic scheduling of a batch of parallel task jobs on heterogeneous clusters

0167-8191/$ see front matter 2011 Elsevier B.V doi:10.1016/j.parco.2010.12.004 ⇑ Corresponding author. Tel.: +351 22 508 18 88. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (J.G. Barbosa This paper addresses the problem of minimizing the scheduling length (make-span) of a batch of jobs with different arrival times. A job is described by a direct acyclic graph (DAG) of parallel tasks. The paper proposes a dynamic scheduling method that adapts the schedule when new jobs are submitted and that may change the processors assigned to a job during its execution. The scheduling method is divided into a scheduling strategy and a scheduling algorithm. We also propose an adaptation of the Heterogeneous EarliestFinish-Time (HEFT) algorithm, called here P-HEFT, to handle parallel tasks in heterogeneous clusters with good efficiency without compromising the makespan. The results of a comparison of this algorithm with another DAG scheduler using a simulation of several machine configurations and job types shows that P-HEFT gives a shorter makespan for a single DAG but scores worse for multiple DAGs. Finally, the results of the dynamic scheduling of a batch of jobs using the proposed scheduler method showed significant improvements for more heavily loaded machines when compared to the alternative resource reservation approach. 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.