Scheduling resources in multi-user, heterogeneous, computing environments with SmartNet

It is increasingly common for computer users to have access to several computers on a network, and hence tobe able to execute many of their tasks on any of several computers. The choice of which computers execute which tasks is commonly determined by users based on a knowledge of computer speeds for each task and the current load on each computer. A number of task scheduling systems have been developed that balance the load of the computers on the network, but such systems tend to minimize the idle time of the computers rather than minimize the idle time of the users. This paper focusesonthebene ts that can be achieved when the scheduling system considers both the computer availabilities and the performance of each task on each computer. The SmartNet resource scheduling system is described and compared to two di erent resource allocation strategies: load balancing and user directed assignment. Results are presented where theoperation of hundreds of di erent networks of computers running thousands of di erent mixes of tasks are simulated in a batch environment. These results indicate that, for the computer environment