The Prospero Resource Manager
In the Prospero Resource Manager, resource management functions are distributed across three types of managers:
- system managers
- job managers
- node managers
The system manager controls access to a collection of processing
resources and allocates them to jobs as requested by job managers.
Large systems may employ multiple system managers, each managing a
subset of resources. The job manager is the principal entity through
which a job acquires processing resources to execute its tasks. The
job manager acquires processor nodes from one or more system managers
and initiates tasks on these nodes through the node manager.
If necessary, it also initiates dedicated tasks to handle terminal and
file I/O from the user tasks. A node manager runs on each processor in
the PRM environment. It initiates and monitors tasks on the node on
which it is running.
Advantages of PRM
- Scalability
- System manager does not require detailed job information
- Multiple system managers
- Job manager selected for application
- Knows more about a job's needs than the system manager
- Alternate job managers useful for debugging and performance tuning
- Abstraction
- Job manager provides a single resource allocator for the job's tasks
- Single system model
Job execution by the Prospero Resource Manager
-
User starts up a job manager on local workstation. Job manager identifies
the resource requirements of job, requests them from one or more system
managers.
-
System manager allocates resources to job manager, authorizes job manager
to use node managers.
-
Job manager requests node managers to spawn tasks on the nodes; starts
terminal and file I/O tasks locally.
-
Tasks execute on the nodes, communicate with each other and perform terminal
and file I/O.
Additional Information
The following paper describes the goals and working of PRM in greater
detail.
B. Clifford Neuman and Santosh Rao, The Prospero Resource Manager: A
Scalable Framework for Processor Allocation in Distributed Systems,
Concurrency: Practice and Experience, 6(4): 339-355, June 1994.
postscript
PRM software Version 1.1 is now available. See
here for details.
Go to
PRM Home Page.