[gridengine users] Simplifying Parallel Environments

[Mark Dixon]

On Thu, 2 Feb 2012, Brian Smith wrote:
...
> In our site, it just so happens that the queues are related to the
> topology/fabric breakdown.  I'm planning on implementing this feature
> using a soft request (e.g. I would like my job to run on nodes living on
> the same edge switch).  PEs themselves have been a problem in our shop.
> I always get "this is complicated" or "they don't do it like this at
> teragrid", or "my last facility used PBS/LSF/etc".  Yes, I'm catering to
> that crowd.  They are the squeaky wheel and I've gotta give 'em the grease.

Which of course is where your JSV comes in - brilliant, aren't they? :)

For what it's worth, we have a single PE that we tell our users to submit 
to, then a JSV does all the heavy lifting in figuring out what actual PE 
it should use.

Of course we make all that optional, so we don't get in the way of people 
who want more control.


...
> Fortunately, -l exclusive is seldom used in our shop and we usually only
> allow its use with an AR.  We favor utilization of the resources so the
> higher-ups know they are being utilized.

So why do you need the nodes/ppn syntax? Do you have users who optimise 
their code for specific grid patterns?


...
> Did that for a long time!  Back in the 5.x days, SGE shipped with a
> template PE that had a script called 'sge_mpirun'.  I still use that
> though it looks nothing like it used to.  The big problem has been
> implementing PPN while supporting myriad MPI implementations.  I also
> found that using a wrapper is great... until someone shows up with an
> application that can't be wrapped.  Happens a lot.
...

I found that many of those problems go away if you're sneaky... like 
calling your mpirun wrapper "mpirun". For really crazy things, we use the 
queue starter_method :)

Perhaps we've been lucky, but I don't think we've got anything that cannot 
be wrapped in some shape or form at the moment.

Cheers,

Mark
-- 
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Mark Dixon                       Email    : m.c.dixon at leeds.ac.uk
HPC/Grid Systems Support         Tel (int): 35429
Information Systems Services     Tel (ext): +44(0)113 343 5429
University of Leeds, LS2 9JT, UK
-----------------------------------------------------------------