Mobile Agent: Load Balanced Process Migration in Linux Environments

Abstract

This is an attempt to gain better performance in executing the processes in distributed environments, which allows execution environments to move processes from processor to processor dynamically at any point in the life of the process. In this paper, a migration algorithm is proposed to migrate the processes dynamically to lightly loaded host using the CPU load as migration criteria. During the migration, the algorithm takes care of identifying the live nodes and migrate the process to lightly loaded workstation. The centralized server maintains the status and load of each node in the NOW. Agents are running independently and are solely responsible for deciding if process need to be migrated or not based on the load of hosts. Agent node will be responsible for keeping track of load and if exceeds the defined threshold, decision will be made to migrate the process. In a case decided, it identifies the lightly loaded host and transfers state of the process to the target hosts. On the target hosts, the state is collected and the process resumes the execution and sends the result back to the source machine which initiated the request to migrate the process. By dynamically moving processes throughout their lifetimes, the system can potentially adapt better to changes in the load that could not be foreseen at the start of the tasks. Proponents of process migration claim that this dynamic adaptation leads to a better system-wide utilization of available resources than static process scheduling.