Scheduling Attributes and Platform LSF

Scheduling is highly complex in the context of Grid Computing. To draw out this complexity, it makes sense to isolate and investigate key areas of the problem. Here we report on communication attributes between higher- and lower-level scheduling instances. Using Platform LSF as the lower-level scheduling instance, we report on overall agreement and a few points of departure relative to the de facto reference on scheduling attributes detailed in Chapter 4. The key concerns involve access to tentative schedules and control exclusivity. While understandable, we show how impractical such ideals prove in the case of production Enterprise deployments; we also challenge the necessity of the schedule-access attribute based on experiences with Platform MultiCluster. Furthermore, experience with the Globus ToolkittTM allows us to expose a lowest-common-denominator tendency in scheduling attributes. We encourage re-assessment of communication attributes subject to these findings and broader comparisons. We also urge for integration of isolated scheduling activities under the framework provided by the Open Grid Services Architecture (OGSA).