Using Multiple Job Queues

Having multiple GridLink licences makes a GridLink farm more powerful in two ways: first, it allows you to use more CPU cores, which makes your jobs finish faster; second, it allows you to use multiple job queues, which makes your jobs start faster. When you have two job queues, if there's a distributable job started in one job queue already and you submit another job to the same queue, it has to wait until the previous one finishes. However, if you have a second job queue available, you can submit your job to the second queue and it will start immediately. The farm will be automatically split, and some resources will be released from the first job to run the second one.

When you had only one job queue, the job submission was simple: all users submitted their jobs to the same job queue on the single master server. When you have two job queues, one question you may want to ask is: which job queue should each user submits his/her jobs to?

You have 2 options to use these 2 job queues:

1. Allow All Users to Access Both Job Queues

If you want to allow all users to access both job queues, you can achieve this in 2 different ways:

1) The traditional way (controlled by the user)

You need to ask users to configure the System Parameters in their AXIS to include all the master servers. (Please refer to the following online article as how to configure the parameter: http://www.ggy.com/htmlhelp/axis/44865.htm) The users decide which queue they will submit their jobs to.

The advantage is the users know exactly where their jobs will run. The disadvantage is the users may have to constantly check which job queue is available.

2) The convenient way (controlled by GridLink)

The users submit all their jobs to the same job queue. You configure GridLink farm to allow a remote job to be moved to another available queue if the current one is busy. (Please refer to the online article "Manage GridLink Farm" as how to configure the parameter.) If the user submitted a job but this queue is busy running another one, the new job can be moved to the second queue automatically by GridLink if the second queue is available at this time.

2. Designate Controllers to Users

In the case that the farm is shared by two departments, for security reason, it would be preferable to designate one controller to users in one department, and designate one controller to users in the other department. While all of them will be able to utilize the whole farm, users in one department will not be able to view the remote jobs submitted from the other department.