Scheduling
MetaScheduling Service
The MetaScheduling Service (MSS) is a Grid-level scheduler developed in the German VIOLA project and used in the VIOLA optical testbed since end of 2005. Its potential has been demonstrated in 2006 at the IST Event 2006 in Helsinki and the CoreGRID Industrial Conference in Sophia Antipolis.
The MSS is responsible for the co-allocation of resources and the negotiation with the local scheduling systems. A UNICORE client plugin exists which UNICORE users can use to describe their meta-scheduling request, comprising reservation characteristics like compute resource capabilities required or the bandwidth of the connections between different sites. To interact with different types of local scheduling systems the adapter pattern approach is used. The role of these adapters is to provide a single interface to the MetaScheduling Service by encapsulating the specific interfaces of the different local scheduling systems. The MSS uses the WS-Agreement protocol (specified by the GRAAP Working Group of the Open Grid Forum) for communication between the UNICORE client and the MSS as well as the MSS and the Adapers. Based on the information received from the UNICORE client, the MetaScheduling Service starts the resource negotiation process by querying the local scheduling systems for their availability and then negotiates the reservations across all local scheduling systems involved in the scheduling process. To do so it realises an negotiation protocol which is described with all its details in "A Meta-Scheduling Service for Co-allocating Arbitrary Types of Resources" (see below).
The MSS is designed to be independent from any Grid middleware. The current development uses UNICORE, but a number of other integrations is underway or currently evaluated. Although the MSS has been initially designed to co-allocate resources for the execution of parallel MPI applications, it currently evolves towards a generic Grid workflow scheduler.
If you are interested in background information concerning application scenarios, the MSS architecture, the integration of the service into UNICORE, and the usage of WS-Agreement, please refer to the following publications:
- On Scheduling in UNICORE - Extending the Web Services Agreement based Resource Management Framework (PDF).
- A Meta-Scheduling Service for Co-allocating Arbitrary Types of Resources (PDF).
- Integration of ISS into the VIOLA Meta-Scheduling Environment (PDF).
- Co-Allocation of Compute and Network Resources in the VIOLA Testbed (PDF).
- Reliable Orchestration of distributed MPI-Applications in a UNICORE-based Grid with MetaMPICH and MetaScheduling (PDF).
Here you find more information about the MetaScheduling Service project hosted by the Fraunhofer Institute SCAI.
Status
This is an ongoing development (August 2007).MSS Project
Hosted by the Fraunhofer Institute SCAI the MSS project provides you with information about the MetaScheduling Service project, a source code repository, mailing list, issue tracking, and many more.
Page URL: http://www.unicore.eu/community/development/scheduling.php