I am please to announce the latest prerelease of Cobalt, version
0.98.2pre1. This version is a joint effort among several people and
includes several major new features. These features include:
- job dependencies
- utility function-based scheduling
- simulator improvements
- can now simulate either BG/L or BG/P systems
- the system component can now generate simulator definition for
running system
- job validation improvements
- diagnostics system
- script mode improvements
- scheduling simulation capability.
A more detailed discussion of these changes can be found here:
https://trac.mcs.anl.gov/projects/cobalt/browser/trunk/README?rev=1320
It is worth noting that we do not recommend updating to this release
for production systems at this time. We have performed basic testing,
including regular systems runs, however, it has not been running on
any system at ANL in production yet.
This release is suitable to be run in simulation (using brooklyn), in
workload-simulation mode (using qsim) or as a secondary cobalt
instance on a production system. Instructions for each of these are
available on the wiki.
We are quite excited about the potential offered by the new scheduling
approach. Utility functions allow the definition of site-specific
scheduling policies on a queue by queue basis. The addition of the
scheduling simulation component (qsim) will allow the quantitative
evaluation of new scheduling policies on system workloads; this system
takes accounting logs as input, so previous system workloads can be
readily simulated. This system has been implemented by Wei Tang, one
of our summer interns. Daniel has implemented utility function-based
scheduling. Look for more improvements and refinements along these
lines soon.
As always, questions and comments can be directed here or to trac.
-nld
