Design Issues of Process Migration Facilities in Distributed Systems

Distributed systems are composed of several loosely-coupled computers communicating over a high-bandwidth network. To achieve an even distribution of the workload in a distributed system, either preemptive or non-preemptive load distribution strategies are used. Preemptive load distribution involves process migration, while non-preemptive strategies are based on initial placement of processes on the machines. Process migration is a mechanism where a process on one machine is moved to another machine in a distributed system. This paper discusses the design of process migration facilities in distributed systems with respect to key issues, such as the system models on which the mechanisms are implemented, the hardware platforms they run on, the methods used in moving a process from one machine to another, the load distribution policies adopted, network transparency, etc.

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