Grid Computing Products and Services

42 Grid Computing Products and Services

3.1 Scheduling

Scheduling is the core of workload virtualization in a grid solution, as it is the

mediator or the middleman that manages the distribution of jobs for workload

balance. This can be performed as simply as taking the next available resource,

but often this task involves prioritizing job queues, managing the load, finding

workarounds when encountering reserved resources, and monitoring progress.

Typically, a job scheduler is a program or application responsible for initiating and

managing jobs automatically by processing job control statements prepared by

the submitter. Some job schedulers also offer a graphical interface to monitor and

analyze a job’s execution.

Some of the typical features of a job scheduler are:

򐂰 Receive a job submission for processing

򐂰 Monitor jobs, checking for completions or failures

򐂰 Advanced features

– Performance Monitoring

– Jobs backfilling

– Jobs status and report

– Jobs priority

Jobs schedulers

Job schedulers are able to submit, control, and monitor the workload of jobs

submitted in a network of computers. The jobs submitted are ran based on

priorities and scheduling algorithms that are typically defined by the submitter.

Some of the most popular job schedulers are IBM LoadLeveler®, Platform LSF,

Portable Batch System (PBS), and Condor.

Figure 3-1 on page 43 points out the focus of the chapter and where job

schedulers are typically used.