About Hosts and Daemons

Grid engine system hosts are classified into four groups, depending on which daemons are running on the system and on how the hosts are registered at sge_qmaster.

• Master host. The master host is central for the overall cluster activity. The master host runs the master daemon sge_qmaster. sge_qmaster controls all grid engine system components such as queues and jobs. It also maintains tables about the status of the components, about user access permissions and the like. The master host usually runs the scheduler sge_schedd. The master host requires no further configuration other than that performed by the installation procedure.

  For information about how to initially set up the master host, see How to Install the Master Host in Sun N1 Grid Engine 6.1 Installation Guide. For information about how to configure dynamic changes to the master host, see Configuring Shadow Master Hosts.

• Execution hosts. Execution hosts are nodes that have permission to run jobs. Therefore they host queue instances, and they run the execution daemon sge_execd. An execution host is initially set up by the installation procedure, as described in How to Install Execution Hosts in Sun N1 Grid Engine 6.1 Installation Guide.

• Administration hosts. Permission can be given to hosts other than the master host to carry out any kind of administrative activity. Administrative hosts are set up with the following command:

  qconf -ah hostname

  See the qconf(1) man page for details.

• Submit hosts. Submit hosts allow for submitting and controlling batch jobs only. In particular, a user who is logged into a submit host can use qsub to submit jobs, can use qstat to control the job status, or can run the graphical user interface QMON. Submit hosts are set up using the following command:

  qconf -as hostname

  See the qconf(1) man page for details.

A host can belong to more than one class. The master host is by default an administration host and a submit host.