Distributed computing on beowulf clusters

Building low cost Beowulf style clusters by using tens or hundreds of PCs is a popular method to achieve higher computing capacities. To gain advantages of such a computing platform, a load balancing scheme is needed for transparent distribution of loads of individual computers throughout the whole cluster in a scalable and efficient manner.In this thesis a scalable cluster architecture and a load balancing model for heterogeneous Beowulf cluster environments are presented. For scalability issues the system relies on a hierarchically centralized architecture. To have general purpose characteristics the proposed load balancing model offers some dynamic and customizable properties in its design. For this purpose, multiple user defined load indices are considered in load calculations like CPU utilization, memory usage, network bandwidth capacity, etc. along with their combinations. In addition, the load distribution policy is based on customizable adaptive load threshold values that dynamically adjust the load distribution decisions according to the system state.The thesis details the design, implementation and performance evaluations of proposed models.