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Process Migration

This document discusses key concepts in process management for distributed operating systems including process allocation, migration, and threads. It describes the steps and desirable features of process migration including mechanisms for freezing/restarting processes, transferring address spaces, and forwarding messages. Thread models and considerations for designing thread packages are also summarized.

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3K views

Process Migration

This document discusses key concepts in process management for distributed operating systems including process allocation, migration, and threads. It describes the steps and desirable features of process migration including mechanisms for freezing/restarting processes, transferring address spaces, and forwarding messages. Thread models and considerations for designing thread packages are also summarized.

Uploaded by

api-26355935
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
Available Formats
Download as PPT, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Process Management

Distributed Operating System


Major concepts
• Process allocation

• Process Migration

• Threads
Steps in process migration
• Selection of a process that should be
migrated
– Done through migration policy
• Selection of the destination node
– Done through migration policy
• Actual transfer of the selected process
– Done through migration mechanism
Desirable features of good process
Migration mechanism
• Transparency
– Object access level
– System call and IPC communication level
• Location independent
• Minimal interference
– To the progress of process and system
– Freezing time : time period for which the execution of the process is stopped for transferring
its info to destination node
• Minimal residue dependencies
– Migrated process should not depend on its previous node
• Efficiency
– Issues
• Time required to migrate process
• Cost of locating the object
• Cost of supporting remote execution once the process is migrated
• Robustness
– Failure of any other node should not affect the accessibility or execution of the process
• Communication between coprocesses
– Communication directly possible irrespective of location
Process Migration Mechanisms
• Subactivities
– Freezing the process on its source and
restarting it on its destination
– Transferring the process’s address space
from its source to destination
– Forwarding messages meant for the migrant
process
– Handling communication between
cooperating process
Freezing and restarting process
• Take snapshot of process’s state on its source node
• Reinstate the snapshot on the destination node
• Issues
– Immediate and delayed blocking of the process
– Fast and slow I/O operations
• After process is blocked wait for completion of fast I/O operations , then
process is frozen
• Slow I/O performed after migration
– Information about open files
• Use of links to remote files
• Use of local files as far as possible
– Reinstating the process on its destination node
• Constructing a new copy in the destination
Address space transfer mechanism
• Information to be transferred
– Process’s state
• Execution status
• Scheduling info
• Info about RAM
• I/O states
• Objects for which the process has access rights
• Info about files opened etc.
– Process’s address space (code, data & stack)
• Higher in size than process’s state info
• Can be transferred after migration , before or after process starts
executing
• Address space transfer mechanisms
– Total freezing
– Pretransferring
– Transfer on reference
Total freezing
• Process’s execution is stopped while
transferring the address space

• Disadvantage that process may be


suspended for a long time
Pretransferring or precopying
• Address space transferred while process is running on the source
node
• After decision for migration is made process continues to execute
on source node until address space is has been transferred
• Initially entire address space is transferred followed by repeated
transfers of pages modified during previous transfer so on until no
reduction in number of pages is achieved
• The remaining pages are transferred after the process is frozen for
transferring its state info
• Freezing time is reduced
• Migration time may increase due to possibility of redundant transfer
of same pages as they become dirty while pretranfer is being done
Transfer on Reference
• Process executes on destination
• Address space is left behind in source
node
• Desired blocks are copied from remote
locations as and when required
• Failure of source node results in failure of
process
Message forwarding
• Messages
– Msgs received at source node after the
process stopped on its source node and not
started on the destination node
– Msgs received at source node after execution
of process started at destination node
– Msgs to be sent to the migrant process from
any other node after process started
executing on the destination node
Message forwarding Mechanisms
• Mechanism of resending the message
– Message type 1 and 2 are returned to sender or
dropped
– Sender retries after locating the new node (using
locate operation)
– Type 3 message directly sent to new node
– Not transparent
• Origin site mechanism
– All msgs are sent to origin site
– Origin site forwards the messages
– If origin site fails forwarding mechanism fails
– Continuous load on the origin site
Message forwarding Mechanisms
• Link traversal mechanism
– Message queue is generated at origin
– Msgs Forwarded to destination node
– After process is migrated link is left on the
previous node
– Process address has two parts process
id,last known location lof
Message forwarding Mechanisms
• Link update mechanism
– Processes communicate over link
independent mechanisms
– During transfer phase the source node sends
link update messages to the kernels
controlling all of the migrant process’s
communication partners.
– Communication buffered during transfer and
redirected after transfer
Process migration
• Mechanism for handling coprocesses
– Disallow separation of coprocesses
• Disallow separation of processes that wait for other
processes to complete
• Ensure that when parent process migrates all its
child process also migrates with it
– Home node origin
• All communication take place via home node
Process migration in
heterogeneous system
• Data translation required

• External data representation as compared


to direct transfer
• Serializing : process of converting from a
particular machine representation to
external data representation format
• Example -- Floating point representation
• Exponent and mantissa
Advantages of process migration
• Reducing average response time of
processes
• Speeding up individual jobs
• Higher throughput
• Utilizing resources effectively
• Reducing network traffic
• Improving system reliability
• Improving system security
threads
• Advantages
– Overheads in creating new process higher
than creating new thread
– Switching between threads cheaper than
switching between processes
– Threads allow parallelism
– Resource sharing can be achieved
Models for organizing threads
• Models for organizing threads
– Dispatcher worker model
– Team model
– Pipeline model
• Issues in designing threads package
– Threads creation
– Threads termination
– Thread synchronization
• Mutex variable
– Lock and unlock
Issues in designing threads
package
• Thread synchronization
– Priority assignment facility
– Flexibility to vary quantum size dynamically
– Handoff scheduling
• Thread to name its successor
– Affinity scheduling
• Thread is scheduled on the CPU it last ran on in the hope
that part of address space is still in CPU’s cache
• Signal handling
– Interrupts and exception handlers
Implementing threads package
• User level

• Kernel level

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