Decentralized management of bi-modal network resources in a distributed stream processing platform

This paper presents resource management techniques for allocating communication and computational resources in a distributed stream processing platform. The platform is designed to exploit the synergy of two classes of network connections—dedicated and opportunistic. Previous studies we conducted have demonstrated the benefits of such bi-modal resource organization that combines small pools of dedicated computers with a very large pool of opportunistic computing capacities of idle computers to serve high throughput computing applications. This paper extends the idea of bi-modal resource organization into the management of communication resources. Since distributed stream processing applications demand large volume of data transmission between processing sites at a consistent rate, adequate control over the network resources is important to ensure a steady flow of processing. The system model used in this paper is a platform where stream processing servers at distributed sites are interconnected with a combination of dedicated and opportunistic communication links. Two pertinent resource allocation problems are analyzed in detail and solved using decentralized algorithms. One is mapping of the processing and the communication tasks of the stream processing workload on the processing and the communication resources of the platform. The other is the dynamic re-allocation of the communication links due to variations in the capacity of the opportunistic communication links. Overall optimization goal of the allocations is higher task throughput and better utilization of the expensive dedicated links without deviating much from the timely completion of the tasks. The algorithms are evaluated through extensive simulation with a model based on realistic observations. The results demonstrate that the algorithms are able to exploit the synergy of bi-modal communication links towards achieving the optimization goals.

Research highlights
► Propose decentralized resource allocation algorithm for distributed stream processing.
► Computing nodes interconnected using two modes of communication links.
► Dedicated links are combined with virtual links over the shared Internet.
► The algorithm exploits the synergy of two modes of communication.
► Simulation validates the cost-effectiveness and throughput gain in bi-modal platform.