A model for communication between resource discovery and load balancing units in computing environments

Resource overloading causes one of the main challenges in computing environments. In this case, a new resource should be discovered to transfer the extra load. However, this results in drastic performance degradation. Thus, it is of high importance to discover the appropriate resource at first. So far, several resource discovery mechanisms have been introduced to overcome this challenge, a majority of which neglect the fact that this important decision should be made in cooperation with other units existing in a computing environment. One of the units is load balancing. In this paper, we propose a model for communication between resource discovery and load balancing units in a computing environment. Based on the model, resource discovery and load balancing decisions are made cooperatively considering the behavior of running processes and resources capacities. These considerations make decisions more precise. In addition, the model presents the loosest type of coupling between resource discovery and load balancing units, i.e., message coupling. This feature provides a better scalability in size for the model. Comparative results show that the proposed model increases scalability in size by 7 to 15 %, cuts message transmission rate by 15 % and improves hit rate by 51 %.