A hybrid ant algorithm for scheduling independent jobs in heterogeneous computing environments

The efficient scheduling of independent computational jobs in a heterogeneous computing (HC) environment is an important problem in domains such as grid computing. Finding optimal schedules for such an environment is (in general) an NP-hard problem, and so heuristic approaches must be used. In this paper we describe an ant colony optimisation (ACO) algorithm that, when combined with local and tabu search, can find shorter schedules on benchmark problems than other techniques found in the literature

A WOA-based optimization approach for task scheduling in cloud Computing systems

Task scheduling in cloud computing can directly affect the resource usage and operational cost of a system. To improve the efficiency of task executions in a cloud, various metaheuristic algorithms, as well as their variations, have been proposed to optimize the scheduling. In this work, for the first time, we apply the latest metaheuristics WOA (the whale optimization algorithm) for cloud task scheduling with a multiobjective optimization model, aiming at improving the performance of a cloud system with given computing resources. On that basis, we propose an advanced approach called IWC (Improved WOA for Cloud task scheduling) to further improve the optimal solution search capability of the WOA-based method. We present the detailed implementation of IWC and our simulation-based experiments show that the proposed IWC has better convergence speed and accuracy in searching for the optimal task scheduling plans, compared to the current metaheuristic algorithms. Moreover, it can also achieve better performance on system resource utilization, in the presence of both small and large-scale tasks

Cloud computing resource scheduling and a survey of its evolutionary approaches

A disruptive technology fundamentally transforming the way that computing services are delivered, cloud computing offers information and communication technology users a new dimension of convenience of resources, as services via the Internet. Because cloud provides a finite pool of virtualized on-demand resources, optimally scheduling them has become an essential and rewarding topic, where a trend of using Evolutionary Computation (EC) algorithms is emerging rapidly. Through analyzing the cloud computing architecture, this survey first presents taxonomy at two levels of scheduling cloud resources. It then paints a landscape of the scheduling problem and solutions. According to the taxonomy, a comprehensive survey of state-of-the-art approaches is presented systematically. Looking forward, challenges and potential future research directions are investigated and invited, including real-time scheduling, adaptive dynamic scheduling, large-scale scheduling, multiobjective scheduling, and distributed and parallel scheduling. At the dawn of Industry 4.0, cloud computing scheduling for cyber-physical integration with the presence of big data is also discussed. Research in this area is only in its infancy, but with the rapid fusion of information and data technology, more exciting and agenda-setting topics are likely to emerge on the horizon

Hybrid ant colony system and genetic algorithm approach for scheduling of jobs in computational grid

Metaheuristic algorithms have been used to solve scheduling problems in grid computing.However, stand-alone metaheuristic algorithms do not always show good performance in every problem instance. This study proposes a high level hybrid approach between ant colony system and genetic algorithm for job scheduling in grid computing.The proposed approach is based on a high level hybridization.The proposed hybrid approach is evaluated using the static benchmark problems known as ETC matrix.Experimental results show that the proposed hybridization between the two algorithms outperforms the stand-alone algorithms in terms of best and average makespan values

Hybrid ant colony optimization for grid computing

A hybrid ant colony optimization technique to solve the stagnation problem in grid computing is proposed in this paper.The proposed algorithm combines the techniques from Ant Colony System and Max – Min Ant System and focused on local pheromone trail update and trail limit.The agent concept is also integrated in this proposed technique for the purpose of updating the grid resource table.This facilitates the hybrid ant colony optimization technique in solving the stagnation problem in two ways within one cycle, thus minimize the total computational time of the jobs

Parallel Asynchronous Particle Swarm Optimization For Job Scheduling In Grid Environment

Grid computing is a new, large and powerful self managing virtual computer out of large collection of connected heterogeneous systems sharing various combination of resources and it is the combination of computer resources from multiple administrative domains applied to achieve a goal, it is used to solve scientific, technical or business problem that requires a great number of processing cycles and needs large amounts of data. One primary issue associated with the efficient utilization of heterogeneous resources in a grid environment is task scheduling. Task Scheduling is an important issue of current implementation of grid computing. The demand for scheduling is to achieve high performance computing. If large number of tasks is computed on the geographically distributed resources, a reasonable scheduling algorithm must be adopted in order to get the minimum completion time. Typically, it is difficult to find an optimal resource allocation for specific job that minimizes the schedule length of jobs. So the scheduling problem is defined as NP-complete problem and it is not trivial. Heuristic algorithms are used to solve the task scheduling problem in the grid environment and may provide high performance or high throughput computing or both. In this paper, a parallel asynchronous particle swarm optimization algorithm is proposed for job scheduling. The proposed scheduler allocates the best suitable resources to each task with minimal makespan and execution time. The experimental results are compared which shows that the algorithm produces better results when compared with the existing ant colony algorithm

Meta-heuristically seeded genetic algorithm for independent job scheduling in grid computing

Grid computing is an infrastructure which connects geographically distributed computers owned by various organizations allowing their resources, such as computational power and storage capabilities, to be shared, selected, and aggregated. Job scheduling problem is one of the most difficult tasks in grid computing systems. To solve this problem efficiently, new methods are required. In this paper, a seeded genetic algorithm is proposed which uses a meta-heuristic algorithm to generate its initial population. To evaluate the performance of the proposed method in terms of minimizing the makespan, the Expected Time to Compute (ETC) simulation model is used to carry out a number of experiments. The results show that the proposed algorithm performs better than other selected techniques

A Review on Energy Consumption Optimization Techniques in IoT Based Smart Building Environments

In recent years, due to the unnecessary wastage of electrical energy in residential buildings, the requirement of energy optimization and user comfort has gained vital importance. In the literature, various techniques have been proposed addressing the energy optimization problem. The goal of each technique was to maintain a balance between user comfort and energy requirements such that the user can achieve the desired comfort level with the minimum amount of energy consumption. Researchers have addressed the issue with the help of different optimization algorithms and variations in the parameters to reduce energy consumption. To the best of our knowledge, this problem is not solved yet due to its challenging nature. The gap in the literature is due to the advancements in the technology and drawbacks of the optimization algorithms and the introduction of different new optimization algorithms. Further, many newly proposed optimization algorithms which have produced better accuracy on the benchmark instances but have not been applied yet for the optimization of energy consumption in smart homes. In this paper, we have carried out a detailed literature review of the techniques used for the optimization of energy consumption and scheduling in smart homes. The detailed discussion has been carried out on different factors contributing towards thermal comfort, visual comfort, and air quality comfort. We have also reviewed the fog and edge computing techniques used in smart homes

Maximizing Computational Profit in Grid Resource Allocation Using Dynamic Algorithm

Grid computing, one of the most trendy phrase used in IT, is emerging vastly distributed computational paradigm. A computational grid provides a collaborative environment of the hefty number of resources capable to do high computing performance to reach the common goal. Grid computing can be called as super virtual computer, it ensemble large scale geographically distributed heterogeneous resources. Resource allocation is a key element in the grid computing and grid resource may leave at anytime from grid environment. Despite a number of benefits in grid computing, still resource allocation is a challenging task in the grid. This work investigates to maximize the profits by analyzing how the tasks are allocated to grid resources effectively according to quality of service parameter and gratifying user requisition. A fusion of SS-GA algorithm has introduced to answer the above raised question about the resource allocation problem based on grid user requisition. The swift uses genetic algorithms heuristic functions and makes an effective resource allocation process in grid environment. The result of proposed fusion of SS-GA algorithm ameliorates the grid resource allocation

Hybrid Meta-heuristic Algorithms for Static and Dynamic Job Scheduling in Grid Computing

The term ’grid computing’ is used to describe an infrastructure that connects geographically distributed computers and heterogeneous platforms owned by multiple organizations allowing their computational power, storage capabilities and other resources to be selected and shared. Allocating jobs to computational grid resources in an efficient manner is one of the main challenges facing any grid computing system; this allocation is called job scheduling in grid computing. This thesis studies the application of hybrid meta-heuristics to the job scheduling problem in grid computing, which is recognized as being one of the most important and challenging issues in grid computing environments. Similar to job scheduling in traditional computing systems, this allocation is known to be an NPhard problem. Meta-heuristic approaches such as the Genetic Algorithm (GA), Variable Neighbourhood Search (VNS) and Ant Colony Optimisation (ACO) have all proven their effectiveness in solving different scheduling problems. However, hybridising two or more meta-heuristics shows better performance than applying a stand-alone approach. The new high level meta-heuristic will inherit the best features of the hybridised algorithms, increasing the chances of skipping away from local minima, and hence enhancing the overall performance. In this thesis, the application of VNS for the job scheduling problem in grid computing is introduced. Four new neighbourhood structures, together with a modified local search, are proposed. The proposed VNS is hybridised using two meta-heuristic methods, namely GA and ACO, in loosely and strongly coupled fashions, yielding four new sequential hybrid meta-heuristic algorithms for the problem of static and dynamic single-objective independent batch job scheduling in grid computing. For the static version of the problem, several experiments were carried out to analyse the performance of the proposed schedulers in terms of minimising the makespan using well known benchmarks. The experiments show that the proposed schedulers achieved impressive results compared to other traditional, heuristic and meta-heuristic approaches selected from the bibliography. To model the dynamic version of the problem, a simple simulator, which uses the rescheduling technique, is designed and new problem instances are generated, by using a well-known methodology, to evaluate the performance of the proposed hybrid schedulers. The experimental results show that the use of rescheduling provides significant improvements in terms of the makespan compared to other non-rescheduling approaches