Economically Enhanced MOSIX for Market-based Scheduling in Grid OS

Applying economic principles to grids is deemed promising to improve the overall value provided by such systems. By introducing market mechanisms, end users can influence the allocation of resources by reporting valuations for these resources. Current market-based schedulers, how-ever, are static, assume the availability of complete information about jobs (in particular with respect to processing times), and do not make use of the flexibility offered by computing systems. In this paper, we present our progress in implementing a novel market mechanism for MOSIX, a state-of-the-art management system for computing clusters and organizational grids. The market mechanism is designed so as to be able to work in large-scale settings with selfish agents. Facing incomplete information about jobs' characteristics, it dynamically allocates jobs to computing nodes by leveraging preemption and process migration, two distinct features offered by the MOSIX system.