Process allocation for load distribution in fault-tolerant multicomputers

In this paper, we consider a load-balancing process allocation method for fault-tolerant multicomputer systems that balances the load before as well as after faults start to degrade the performance of the system. In order to be able to tolerate a single fault, each process (primary process) is duplicated (i.e., has a backup process). The backup process executes on a different processor from the primary, checkpointing the primary process and recovering the process if the primary process fails due to the occurrence of a fault. In this paper, we first formalize the problem of load-balancing process allocation and show that it is an NP-hard problem. Next, we propose a new heuristic process allocation method and analyze the performance of the proposed allocation method. Simulations are used to compare the proposed method with a process allocation method that does not take into account the different load characteristics of the primary and backup processes. While both methods perform well before the occurrence of a fault in a primary process, only the proposed method maintains a balanced load after the occurrence of such a fault.