Performance study of dynamic load balancing policies for distributed systems with service interruptions

A study is made of three dynamic load balancing policies in distributed systems with service interruptions, namely, sender initiated, receiver initiated, and a combination of the two, in different cases: performing and not performing load-balancing functions while the computers are in the middle of interruptions. The policies are analyzed by using decomposition approximation and matrix-geometric solution techniques. Simulations are used to validate the analytical results. The policies are compared to each other and to no load balancing. Sensitivities of the performance to the characteristics of interruptions and design parameters are studied. It is concluded that load balancing has a significant advantage in improving performance. Performing load-balancing functions while the computers are in the middle of interruptions also provides considerable performance improvement