[Beowulf] Functionality of schedulers

[Prentice Bisbal]

On 03/01/2012 01:52 AM, Jon Tegner wrote:
> Hi list!
>
> Is there any scheduler which has the functionality to automatically put 
> a running job on hold when another job with higher priority is submitted?
>
> Preferably the state of the first job should be frozen, and saved to 
> disk, so that it can be restarted again when the higher priority job has 
> finished.
>
> Is this at all possible (we are using torque/maui, and I couldn't find 
> this feature there)?
>

SGE can do this more or less, but it doesn't write the the job state to
disk, unless you count swapping. In SGE you can create multiple queues,
where one is subordinate (lower priority) to another. When a job is
running in the subordinate queue and then a job submitted in a superior
queue, the job is the subordinate queue will be paused while the higher
priority job runs. The problem with this that the subordinate job is
only paused it stays in memory, and it doesn't free up any resources it
consumed (software licenses, etc), and it won't be migrated to other hosts

If you want a job to be written to disk so it can be completely, or be
able to be migrated to other hosts, you might want to look at checkpoint
restart options like BLCR, if that's applicable to your situation.

--
Prentice