[ogsa-bes-wg] Re: [jsdl-wg] Questions and potential changes to JSDL, as seen from HPC Profile point-of-view

[Donal K. Fellows]

Oxana Smirnova wrote:
> As a user, I strongly disagree. I *am* interested to have my jobs 
> executed as soon as possible, for sure. This means I want them to be 
> sent by a workload management system not just to any site that matches 
> job requirements, but to the best site - e.g., with the fastest 
> processor, bigger memory, better bandwidth etc. I may also be interested 
> in to send them to a cheapest site, or to a fastest site among the cheap 
> ones. I may prefer to stay away from sites that use afs, and I may need 
> to specify that I need inbound connectivity for a worker node. I perhaps 
> only want to use sites in one specific country, for some licensing 
> reasons. There are so many levels of optimization that users need, one 
> can write a book about it.

This is certainly a good indication that there cannot be a fixed set of
resource selection descriptions. Any truly workable solution to this
problem has to be really quite general. I've already designed (and
implemented) such a scheme as it happens. ;-)

> This is not a hypothetical case: I know many users that schedule jobs by 
> hand to sites that in their experience are better, while the workload 
> management system can not tell this from the available information or 
> job description. This manual scheduling is orthogonal to the Grid idea, 
> I dare say.

It's certainly reflecting the (too common) case where users and admins
are in different warring camps. :-(

> Instead, job specification should include very explicit 
> attributes, including potentially a preferred sysadmin name :-) As it is 
>  pretty difficult to define a boundary between generic service levels 
> description and specific informmation for fine-tuning, I would say it's 
> better to stay with one "language" that covers all.

I should note that this is properly part of the domain of the OGSA-RSS
working group, which I happen to chair. :-) I'm currently looking for a
co-chair (more than one would be cool!) so that I'm not completely
overworked. Volunteers will be able to partake in numerous benefits,
such as invitations to speak at OGSA F2F meetings and the chance to go
to the Chairs' Appreciation Night...

Donal.