Ticket Policies

The functional policy, the share-based policy, and the override policy are all implemented with tickets. Each ticket policy has a ticket pool from which tickets are allocated to jobs that are entering the multimachine grid engine system. Each routine ticket policy that is in force allocates some tickets to each new job. The ticket policy can reallocate tickets to the executing job at each scheduling interval. The criteria that each ticket policy uses to allocate tickets are explained in this section.

Tickets weight the three policies. For example, if no tickets are allocated to the functional policy, that policy is not used. If an equal number of tickets are assigned to the functional ticket pool and to the share-based ticket pool, both policies have equal weight in determining a job's importance.

Grid engine managers allocate tickets to the routine ticket policies at system configuration. Managers and operators can change ticket allocations at any time. Additional tickets can be injected into the system temporarily to indicate an override. Ticket policies are combined by assignment of tickets: when tickets are allocated to multiple ticket policies, a job gets a portion of its tickets from each ticket policy in force.

The grid engine system grants tickets to jobs that are entering the system to indicate their importance under each ticket policy in force. Each running job can gain tickets, for example, from an override; lose tickets, for example, because the job is getting more than its fair share of resources; or keep the same number of tickets at each scheduling interval. The number of tickets that a job holds represents the resource share that the grid engine system tries to grant that job during each scheduling interval.

You can display the number of tickets a job holds with QMON or using qstat -ext. See Monitoring and Controlling Jobs With QMON. The qstat command also displays the priority value assigned to a job, for example, using qsub -p. See the qstat(1) man page for more details.