OpenMake Meister

Configuring Remote Agents for Load Balancing

 

To configure your Remote Agents, go to the “Server Pool” and “Administer” menu option on the OpenMake Management Control Console.  Highlight the Remote Agent and select the “Edit” button.  You will first be prompted for a Remote Agent “Type.”  The Type value can be:

     Physical

     Pre-Provisioned Virtual

     CloudBuilder Options:  Amazon EC2, HyperV, and vCenter.

If you are using virtual machines, but not using CloudBuilder, you will need to choose “Pre-Provisioned Virtual.”  If you are using CloudBuilder, refer to the “CloudBuilder Automatic Provisioning” section of this User Guide for details in configuring CloudBuilder virtual machines. 

 

Note: You can shut down a Remote Agent without it being removed from the Remote Agents list.

 

Once you have selected the Remote Agent Type, you must determine the load balancing criteria for the Remote Agent.  Load balancing is the process of identifying the Remote Agent with the least amount of utilization.  Load balancing maximizes machine usage by distributing the workload of a Workflow to the least utilized machine.  The following values are required:

 

CPU % Threshold: Used to create a weighted value for use in deciding to which machine a queued activity will be assigned during load balancing. Recommend value is 80%.   For instance, if there are two Remote Agents, Agent A and Agent B, a CPU % Threshold can be assigned to determine which machine to use first.

 

The equation for this weighted value is:

CPU  % Threshold – Current CPU % Usage

 

For example, if Agent A and Agent B both have a CPU % Threshold of 80%, and Agent A is currently running at 50% CPU, its weighted value will be 30. If Agent B is running at 70% CPU utilization, its weighted value will be 10. In this case, if all other settings for the two Remote Agents are the same, Agent A will have the queued activities assigned to it, since it has a higher differential between CPU % threshold and current CPU % usage.

 

Queue Depth Threshold: Determines how many Workflow Activities will be queued up to run before the KB server starts offloading activities to other Remote Agents in the Server Pool.  The value of this number is determined by the amount of resources available to process Workflow Activities.  You can enter a number between 1 and 200.  The initial recommended value to 10 and can be increased if additional Remote Agents are being started unnecessarily.  The higher the number, the larger the queue.

 

Max # of Running Workflows:  Controls how many Workflows can be run simultaneously on the same Remote Agent.  Note: this value is different from the value set by the OMSUBMIT_MAX_USER_PROC  variable, which controls how many simultaneous Workflow processes can be run on a Remote Agent, or better known as parallelized processes.