Reservations for compute resources in federated e-infrastructure

Abstract

This paper presents work done to prepare compute resource reservations in the PL-Grid Infrastructure. A compute resource reservation allows a user to allocate some fraction of resources for exclusive access, when reservation is prepared. That way the user is able to run his/her job without waiting for allocating resources in a batch system. In the PL-Grid Infrastructure reservations can be allocated up to amount negotiated in a PL-Grid grant. One way of getting reservation is allocation by a resource administrator. Another way is to use predefined pool of resources accessible by various middleware. In both approaches once obtained, reservations identifiers can be used by middleware during job submissions. Enabling reservations requires changes in middleware. The modifications needed in each middleware will be described. The possible extension of existing reservation model in the PL-Grid Infrastructure can be envisaged: reservation usage normalization and reservation accounting. The reservations are created and utilized in the user’s context, so there must be a way to pass the reservation details from the user-level tools to a batch system. Each of PL-Grid supported middleware, namely gLite, UNICORE and QosCosGrid, required adaptations to implement this goal.