Installation and configuration procedures

To install and configure MultiCluster, take the following steps:

  1. Plan the cluster.
  2. Establish communication between clusters.
  3. Additional tasks that might be required to establish communication between clusters.
  4. Test communication between clusters.
  5. Establish resource sharing.
  6. Optional tasks.

Plan the cluster (required)

  1. Read the Using Platform MultiCluster Overview to learn about how MultiCluster can be useful to you.
  2. Decide which clusters will participate. Read about setup to learn about the issues that could prevent clusters from working together.
  3. Decide which resources you want to share.
  4. Decide how you will share the resources among clusters. Read about the various configuration options available in the MultiCluster job forwarding model and the MultiCluster resource leasing model.
  5. Read about setup to learn about configuration options common to both models.

Establish communication between clusters (required)

  1. For each participating cluster, obtain and install a valid MultiCluster license.
  2. For each participating cluster, add the MultiCluster product to the LSF cluster configuration file.
  3. For resource sharing to work between clusters, the clusters should have common definitions of host types, host models, and resources. Configure this information in lsf.shared.
  4. To establish communication, clusters must be aware of other clusters and know how to contact other clusters. Add each cluster name and its master host name and master host candidate names to the Cluster section of lsf.shared.

Additional tasks that might be required to establish communication between clusters

  1. By default, LSF assumes a uniform user name space within a cluster and between clusters.
  2. With MultiCluster, LSF daemons can use non-privileged ports. By default, LSF daemons in a MultiCluster environment use privileged port authentication.

Test communication between clusters (required)

  1. Restart each cluster using the lsadmin and badmin commands:
    % lsadmin limrestart all
    % badmin mbdrestart
  2. To verify that MultiCluster is enabled, run lsclusters and bclusters:
    % lsclusters
    CLUSTER_NAME    STATUS    MASTER_HOST    ADMIN    HOSTS    SERVERS
    cluster1         ok       hostA          admin1   1        1
    cluster2         ok       hostD          admin2   3        3
    % bclusters
    [Remote Batch Information]
    No local queue sending/receiving jobs from remote clusters

Establish resource sharing (required)

  1. Run a simple test of resource sharing (optional).
  2. Configure resource-sharing policies between clusters.

Optional tasks

  1. By default, all the clusters in a MultiCluster environment are aware of all the other clusters. This makes it possible for clusters to share resources or information. You can restrict awareness of remote clusters at the cluster level.
  2. With MultiCluster, LSF daemons can use non-privileged ports (by default, LSF daemons in a MultiCluster environment use privileged port authentication). You can also choose the method of daemon authentication.
  3. When a local cluster requests load or host information from a remote cluster, the information is cached. If the local cluster is required to display the same information again, LSF displays the cached information, unless the cache has expired. The expiry period for cached information is configurable.
  4. The default configuration of LSF is that clusters share information about the resources used by other clusters, and the information is updated every 5 minutes by the execution or provider cluster. You can disable the feature or modify how often MultiCluster resource usage is updated.
  5. To learn about optional features related to each configuration model, read about the various configuration options available in the MultiCluster job forwarding model and the MultiCluster resource leasing model.