INDUSTRY
Cluster Resources Releases TORQUE 2.3 & GOLD Allocation Manager 2.1.5
Cluster Resources announced the release and availability for download of the most recent versions of TORQUE Resource Manager and Gold Allocation Manager. Both TORQUE and Gold are open source solutions, and can be downloaded from www.clusterresources.com/downloads/torque/ and www.clusterresources.com/downloads/gold/, respectively. 
“Cluster Resources continues to improve the performance and reliability of the open source applications we develop and maintain,” stated Michael Jackson, president of Cluster Resources. “Since TORQUE was released in a number of years ago it has been installed on many of the world’s largest clusters and grids. To date we have recorded tens of thousands of downloads from our web site alone; this doesn’t take into consideration the numerous installs from cluster deployment kits and partners. And Gold continues to benefit sites that need and open source accounting and allocation management solution, providing valuable cost and resource sharing controls.” TORQUE 2.3 – Resource Management TORQUE, an open source resource manager based on the original *PBS project, now features high availability (or redundant) mode which ensures clusters will continue to run even if the host server fails. Two host servers will boot at the same time but only one server does a complete boot. The backup server partially boots, and then regularly cycles between a sleep mode and checking the main host server for system failures every second. If the backup server detects the head node has gone down it will immediately replace the failed node. This most recent version of TORQUE includes the long awaited job arrays. Job arrays allow multiple jobs to be created at one time with one qsub command. Each job within an array runs using the same script in nearly identical environments. Users have the option of having each job in the array run slightly different actions based on defined variables. A job naming convention within this feature allows users to reference the job array as a whole or to reference an individual job within the set. Additional new capabilities include dynamic jobs, advanced diagnostics, high throughput support and other functionality. Customers who purchase Moab Workload Manager receive free technical support for TORQUE. Gold 2.1.5 – Allocation Management Significant performance enhancements have been made to Gold Allocation Manager, an open source accounting system, including the addition of indexes to tables, which increases database performance dramatically. Karl Lindekugel of ASU and Brock Palen of LSU contributed this improvement, demonstrating that the use of indexes speeds up common operations such as balance, reservation, charge and bank statements by as much as 10x. The ability to query based on a NULL or NOT NULL value of object attributes was also added, and improvements were made in responding to server failures. “Cluster Resources is dedicated to maintaining our open source solutions with the ongoing input from the user/open source community,” added Jackson. “There is just no better development team, and no better way to enhance TORQUE and Gold than with the power of distributed peer review.” Current Gold users do not need to upgrade in order to take advantage of index performance improvements. Indexes can be added to an existing Gold database to achieve the full benefit by running the “CREATE INDEX” queries found in bank.sql.in within the sql prompt. Additional information is located at its Web site. Gold is fully compatible with Cluster Resources’ Moab Cluster Suite and Moab Grid Suite, interacting to track and charge job resource usage, create billing statements and generate usage reports. Gold works seamlessly with Moab’s workload management, scheduling and advanced reservation functions.
“Cluster Resources continues to improve the performance and reliability of the open source applications we develop and maintain,” stated Michael Jackson, president of Cluster Resources. “Since TORQUE was released in a number of years ago it has been installed on many of the world’s largest clusters and grids. To date we have recorded tens of thousands of downloads from our web site alone; this doesn’t take into consideration the numerous installs from cluster deployment kits and partners. And Gold continues to benefit sites that need and open source accounting and allocation management solution, providing valuable cost and resource sharing controls.” TORQUE 2.3 – Resource Management TORQUE, an open source resource manager based on the original *PBS project, now features high availability (or redundant) mode which ensures clusters will continue to run even if the host server fails. Two host servers will boot at the same time but only one server does a complete boot. The backup server partially boots, and then regularly cycles between a sleep mode and checking the main host server for system failures every second. If the backup server detects the head node has gone down it will immediately replace the failed node. This most recent version of TORQUE includes the long awaited job arrays. Job arrays allow multiple jobs to be created at one time with one qsub command. Each job within an array runs using the same script in nearly identical environments. Users have the option of having each job in the array run slightly different actions based on defined variables. A job naming convention within this feature allows users to reference the job array as a whole or to reference an individual job within the set. Additional new capabilities include dynamic jobs, advanced diagnostics, high throughput support and other functionality. Customers who purchase Moab Workload Manager receive free technical support for TORQUE. Gold 2.1.5 – Allocation Management Significant performance enhancements have been made to Gold Allocation Manager, an open source accounting system, including the addition of indexes to tables, which increases database performance dramatically. Karl Lindekugel of ASU and Brock Palen of LSU contributed this improvement, demonstrating that the use of indexes speeds up common operations such as balance, reservation, charge and bank statements by as much as 10x. The ability to query based on a NULL or NOT NULL value of object attributes was also added, and improvements were made in responding to server failures. “Cluster Resources is dedicated to maintaining our open source solutions with the ongoing input from the user/open source community,” added Jackson. “There is just no better development team, and no better way to enhance TORQUE and Gold than with the power of distributed peer review.” Current Gold users do not need to upgrade in order to take advantage of index performance improvements. Indexes can be added to an existing Gold database to achieve the full benefit by running the “CREATE INDEX” queries found in bank.sql.in within the sql prompt. Additional information is located at its Web site. Gold is fully compatible with Cluster Resources’ Moab Cluster Suite and Moab Grid Suite, interacting to track and charge job resource usage, create billing statements and generate usage reports. Gold works seamlessly with Moab’s workload management, scheduling and advanced reservation functions.