User manual
1 Introduction
Third-Party Sch
edulers
As an alternativ
etousingtheMathWorksjobmanager,youcanusea
third-party sch
eduler. This could be Windows CCS, Platform Computing
LSF, mpiexec, or
a generic scheduler.
Choosing Between a Scheduler and Job Manager
You shoul d cons
ider the following when deciding to use a scheduler or the
MathWorks job m
anager for distributing your tasks:
• Does your clust
er already have a scheduler?
If you already h
ave a scheduler, you may be required to use it as a m eans
of controlling
access to the cluster. Your existing scheduler might be just
as easy to use a
s a job manager, so there might be n o need for the extra
administrati
on involved.
• Is the handlin
g of distributed computing jobs the only cluster scheduling
management yo
uneed?
The MathWorks
job manager is designed specifically for MathWorks
distributed
computing applications. If other scheduling tasks are not
needed, a thi
rd-party scheduler might not offer any advantages.
• Is there a fil
e sharing configuration on your cluster already?
The MathWork
s job manager can handle all file and data sharing necessary
foryourdist
ributed computing applications. This might be helpful in
configurati
ons where shared access is limited.
• Are you inter
ested in batch or interactive processing?
When you use a
job manager, worker processes usually remain running at
all times, de
dicated to their job manager. With a third-party scheduler,
workers are
run as applications that are started for the evaluation of tasks,
and stopped
when their tasks are complete. If tasks are small or take little
time, star
ting a worker for each one might involve too much ove rhead time.
• Are there se
curity concerns?
Your schedu
ler may be configured to accommodate your particular security
requireme
nts.
• How many no
des are on your cluster?
1-6