The nature and functions of Service Domain Manager (SDM), an add-on component for Sun Grid Engine 6.2u5, are described in DanT's GridBlog. He writes that SDM is designed to allow for services of all types to share resources with each other. He explains that each cluster has a set of performance metrics specified via service level objectives (SLOs). If at any point a cluster is in violation of its SLOs, it appeals to the SDM resource provider service for additional resources. The resource provider will look for resources wherever they're available and, finding them, will re-assign the resources to the cluster in need.
The benefits of building topology-aware scheduling into Sun Grid Engine 6.2 update 5 are explained in a blog entry by Dan Templeton. Given that an average OS does context switches at a rather high frequency, an application may find itself executing on a different CPU and core every time it gets the chance to run. If that application makes any use of the CPU cache, for example, its performance will suffer for it. The performance might not suffer much, but the difference is usually measurable. Hence, the virtues of topology-aware scheduling.
In its latest iteration, Sun's Grid Engine comes of age -- the cloud age, that is. According to Steve Wilson's blog the new version both enables dynamic resource reallocation and the ability to use on-demand resources from Amazon EC2 as well as deep integration with Apache Hadoop at the enterprise level.
Sun Grid Engine 6.2 Update 5 is a feature update release with significant additions including data-aware scheduling, improved public cloud adapter technology and new commands for invoking power-saving software. Additionally, Update 5 includes improvements to the Sun Grid Engine Service Domain Manager and Sun Grid Engine Inspect modules.
When the South African government launched its largest (both in South Africa and the continent as a whole) supercomputer at CHPC in Cape Town, Marc Hamilton, Sun VP of Americas Systems Practice was there to interview Naledi Pandor, South African Minister of Science and Technology, on the system and the Sun technology at its core - the second generation Sun Constellation System.
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