Platform LSF Administrator's Primer Version 6.2

Managing Software Licenses and Other Shared Resources
Platform LSF Administrator’s Primer
48
Managing Software Licenses and Other Shared
Resources
This chapter uses managing software licenses as an example of how to set up an LSF
External LIM (ELIM) to monitor dynamic shared resources.
Contents
◆ “About dynamic shared resources” on page 48
◆ “Defining dynamic shared resources in an ELIM” on page 48
◆ “Mapping dynamic shared resources to hosts” on page 49
◆ “Monitoring dynamic shared resources” on page 49
◆ “Using dynamic shared resources” on page 50
About dynamic shared resources
LSF keeps track of two main types of resources:
◆ Host-based resources are available on all hosts in the cluster; for example, host type
and model, or node-locked software licenses.
◆ Shared resources are managed as dynamic load indexes available for a group of hosts
in the cluster; for example, networked floating software licenses, shared file systems.
Shared resources are shared by a group of LSF hosts. LSF manages shared resources for
the purpose of host selection and batch or interactive job execution. These resources are
dynamic because the load on the system changes with the availability of the resources.
Software licenses
as shared
resources
The most common application of shared resources is to manage software licenses.
Configuring your application licenses as shared resources lets you submit all your jobs
at any time, and have LSF run the jobs according to their priorities when licenses are
available, or queue them when licenses are not available, then dispatch them when
licenses are free. This ensures optimal use of such costly and critical resources.
Defining dynamic shared resources in an ELIM
For LSF to use a shared resource like a software license, you must define the resource in
the Resource section of the
lsf.shared file. You define the type of resource and how
often LSF should refresh the value of the resource.
For LSF to track the resources correctly over time, you must define them as external load
indices so that LSF can update them periodically with a program called an External Load
Information Manager (ELIM).
An ELIM can be a shell script or a compiled binary program, which returns the values
of the shared resources you define. The ELIM must be named
elim and located in
LSF_SERVERDIR. For example:
/usr/share/lsf/lsf_62/6.2/sparc-sol2/etc/elim
You can find examples of sample ELIMs in the misc/examples directory.
Example: shared
licenses
In lsf.shared, define two dynamic shared resources for software licenses, named
license1 and license2:
Begin Resource