Scheduling Data-IntensiveWorkflows onto Storage-Constrained Distributed Resources

Abstract

In this paper we examine the issue of optimizing disk usage and of scheduling large-scale scientific workflows onto distributed resources where the workflows are data- intensive, requiring large amounts of data storage, and where the resources have limited storage resources. Our approach is two-fold: we minimize the amount of space a workflow requires during execution by removing data files at runtime when they are no longer required and we schedule the workflows in a way that assures that the amount of data required and generated by the workflow fits onto the individual resources. For a workflow used by gravitational- wave physicists, we were able to improve the amount of storage required by the workflow by up to 57 %. We also designed an algorithm that can not only find feasible solutions for workflow task assignment to resources in disk- space constrained environments, but can also improve the overall workflow performance.