Speculative Scheduling of Parameter Sweep Applications Using Job Behavior Descriptions

The execution of data intensive Grid applications raises several questions regarding job scheduling, data migration, and replication. This paper presents new scheduling algorithms using more sophisticated job behaviour descriptions that allow estimating job completion times more precisely thus improving scheduling decisions. Three approaches of providing input to the decision procedure are discussed: a) single job description, b) multiple job descriptions, and c) multiple job descriptions with mutation. The proposed Grid middleware components (1) monitor the execution of jobs and gather resource access information, (2) analyse the compiled information and generate a description of the behaviour of the job, (3) refine the already existing job description, and (4) use the refined behaviour description to schedule the submitted jobs. DOI: 10.4018/978-1-60960-603-9.ch005