Load balancing for the management of service performance in open service markets
Dirk Thißen · 2002
In open service markets customers can choose between several providers offering similar services. To survive in the arising competition, service providers are compelled to satisfy their customers by not only offering services for a reasonable price but additionally deploy them in an efficient way regarding e.g. performance and availability. Because in a service provision process application, network, and system aspects are involved, new management concepts are needed. This paper discusses a mechanism for the management of services in distributed environments to reduce the probability of a performance decrease or a connection loss in service provision. To support a customer in choosing a service, a service trader is used as a central component. This trader considers the global state of the distributed system's resources using a load balancer. To fulfil quality characteristics of a mediated service at usage time, management proxies encapsulate services or service groups to observe their performance and availability characteristics. This approach only causes a small involvement of service providers and customers in the selection and management process.