BProc: the Beowulf distributed process space

ABSTRACT

The Beowulf Distributed Process Space (BProc) is a set of Linux kernel modifications which provides a single system image and process migration facilities for processes running in a Beowulf style cluster. With BProc, all the processes running in a cluster are visible on the cluster front end machine and are controllable via existing UNIX process control mechanisms. Process creation is done on the front end machine and the processes are placed on the nodes where they will run with BProc's process migration mechanism.These two features combined greatly simplify creating and cleaning up parallel jobs as well as removing the necessity of a user login to remote nodes in the cluster. Removing the need for user logins drastically reduces the mount of software required on cluster nodes.Job startup with BProc's process migration mechanism is faster than the traditional method of logging into a node and starting the process with rsh. BProc does not affect file or network I/O of processes running on remote nodes so the vast majority of MPI applications will experience no performance loss as a result of being managed by BProc.

REFERENCES

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INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  C. Computer Systems Organization
  C.2 COMPUTER-COMMUNICATION NETWORKS
      C.2.4 Distributed Systems
          Subjects: Network operating systems

Additional Classification:
  D. Software
  D.4 OPERATING SYSTEMS
      D.4.1 Process Management
      D.4.7 Organization and Design
          Subjects: Distributed systems

General Terms:
Design, Management

Keywords:
Linux, cluster, process migration, single system image