This article aims to present the first ideas for developing a framework for load-balancing called GetLB. Considering the electronic funds transfer (EFT) context, GetLB offers a new scheduling heuristic that optimizes the selection of Processing Machines to execute transactions in a processing center. Instead of using the Round-Robin typical approach, the proposal combines data from computation, network, memory and disc metrics for producing a unified scheduling approach, denoted LL (i,j). The proposal calculates the load level of executing an i-typed transaction on a j specific Processing Machine. Furthermore, the load-balancing framework also enables notifications triggered by Processing Machines to the Dispatcher for informing it about asynchronous events such as administrative tasks or transactions disposing. Aiming to evaluate GetLB, a simple prototype was developed by using Java RMI. Preliminary tests revealed that the framework is feasible, outperforming the number of queued transactions obtained with the Round-Robin approach.

Journal of Applied Computing