Introduction

PTP allows you to launch and monitor applications on local or remote resources using systems which are configured from an XML file via JAXB ( javax.xml.bind ) technology.

The target system configuration files:

  1. Allow for maximum adaptability. Often job schedulers (PBS, LSF, LoadLeveler, etc.) or interactive runtime systems (OpenMPI, PE, SLURM, etc.) are set up by system administrators in special or non-standard ways which make it difficult to use a generic tool. The configuration file allows a user or community of users to fit the resource manager to a class of systems, to a single host, or even to special application usage.
  2. Simplify adding support for new systems. Building the resource manager control system and its UI presentation from an XML configuration means that in most cases no special Java coding is necessary. Users should be able to accommodate new systems, at least on the client-end, without writing and loading additional Eclipse plugins. (The only qualification here is that the monitoring component also support that type of scheduler or runtime; see the following paragraphs.)

A target system configuration consist of two components, a "control" component, which governs the configuration, launch and cancellation of individual jobs entirely from the client end, and a "monitoring" component, which displays job status as well as global information about the HPC resource. The monitoring system uses built-in types provided by the PTP distribution which support most standard scheduler types. Adding a new configuration will normally entail only the specification of its control part. The default mode of usage is that the client stages the necessary components (mostly Perl scripts) automatically, but in a future release, the monitor will also be capable of connecting directly to a system-wide (web-based) deployment.

The "control" component of the target configuration is associated with a remote connection when the user configures a "Parallel Application" run configuration using the standard Eclipse launch configuration mechanism. This remote connection is the used whenever the control system needs to send or receive data, such as when running a command, or copying a file.

The "monitor" component of the target configuration is associated with a remote connection via the "Monitors" view in the "System Monitoring" perspective. This connection is used for sending and receiving data required to perform the monitoring activities. Note that the "control" and "monitor" component's remote connections are independent, although they can both share the same connection (which is the normal case).

The following is a guide to the target system configuration XML definition. Those interested only in using configurations already provided with the PTP distribution should consult the User Guide under the relevant scheduler section.