A Decentralized and Cooperative Workflow Scheduling Algorithm

In the current approaches to workflow scheduling, there is no cooperation between the distributed workflow brokers and as a result, the problem of conflicting schedules occur. To overcome this problem, in this paper, we propose a decentralized and cooperative workflow scheduling algorithm. The proposed approach utilizes a peer-to-peer (P2P) coordination space with respect to coordinating the application schedules among the Grid wide distributed workflow brokers. The proposed algorithm is completely decentralized in the sense that there is no central point of contact in the system, the responsibility of the key functionalities such as resource discovery and scheduling coordination are delegated to the P2P coordination space. With the implementation of our approach, not only the performance bottlenecks are likely to be eliminated but also efficient scheduling with enhanced scalability and better autonomy for the users are likely to be achieved. We prove the feasibility of our approach through an extensive trace driven simulation study.