[comp.sys.isis] ISIS for load balancing on idle machines

ken@gvax.cs.cornell.edu (Ken Birman) (01/08/91)

> Hello.

> I've in mind a posting of you from July 90 concerning the use
> of ISIS for farming out jobs to idle machines.

> If you got any feedback or have done any own work according this,
> it would be nice hearing from you...

> Regards,

>   Arnulf Mester, University of Dortmund, Dept. of Computer Science, IRB
>   POB. 500 500, D-4600 Dortmund 50, West Germany, Tel. +49 231 755-3263
>   Fax +49 231 755-2386, e-mail: am@heike.informatik.uni-dortmund.de

ISIS Distributed Systems is including a distributed resource manager
as part of the forthcoming V3.0 release.  This program sweeps idle
machines into a pool and (through various interfaces, including a command
interface and a procedural "API") schedules programs onto the idle
machines.  The application is fairly sophisticated about this, and I
will ask Tim Clark to post the manual pages for comments and suggestions
when he gets back next week.  Basically, the program is set up to be
easily customized to know about special hardware, licensing restrictions,
etc., and has fault-tolerance mechanisms built into it.  It can also
transfer data files to and from the remote system and match binaries
with the appropriate CPU type, etc.

The program is in a beta test now and seems to be in good shape.

I should point out that the IDS tool would have to be licensed through
the company.  (I can forward inquiries to them).  I am not aware of
any free-ware for this purpose.

Ken Birman