Managing Workload by Managing Resources and Policies

The grid engine system is an advanced resource management tool for heterogeneous distributed computing environments. Workload management means that the use of shared resources is controlled to best achieve an enterprise's goals such as productivity, timeliness, level-of-service, and so forth. Workload management is accomplished through managing resources and administering policies. Sites configure the system to maximize usage and throughput, while the system supports varying levels of timeliness and importance . Job deadlines are instances of timeliness. Job priority and user share are instances of importance.

The grid engine software provides advanced resource management and policy administration for UNIX environments that are composed of multiple shared resources. The grid engine system is superior to standard load management tools with respect to the following major capabilities:

• Innovative dynamic scheduling and resource management that enables the grid engine software to enforce site-specific management polices.

• Dynamic collection of performance data to provide the scheduler with up-to-the-minute job-level resource consumption and system load information.

• Availability of enhanced security by way of Certificate Security Protocol (CSP)-based encryption. Instead of transferring messages in clear text, the messages in this more secure system are encrypted with a secret key.

• High-level policy administration for the definition and implementation of enterprise goals such as productivity, timeliness, and level-of-service.

The grid engine software provides users with the means to submit computationally demanding tasks to the grid for transparent distribution of the associated workload. Users can submit batch jobs, interactive jobs, and parallel jobs to the grid. For the administrator, the software provides comprehensive tools for monitoring and controlling jobs.

The product also supports checkpointing programs. Checkpointing jobs migrate from workstation to workstation without user intervention on load demand.