Getting started with Compute Grid

The major components of the Compute Grid include the command-line interface, Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) interface, Web services interface, job scheduler, and grid endpoint.

The following diagram shows the major components of Compute Grid:
Figure 1. Compute Grid components
The Compute Grid components include the command line interface, EJB interface, Web service interface, and Job management console. These components each communicate with the job scheduler. The job scheduler has a job database that contains all the jobs. The job scheduler communicates with two node endpoints, while an application server that is doing transactional work runs on another node.

The job management console provides a Graphical User Interface (GUI) with which you can perform job management functions. Most of the functionality from other interfaces is also available from the job management console.

With the command-line interface, you can submit and control the Compute Grid jobs in the system. The enterprise bean and Web service interfaces provide similar functionality to both Java 2 Platform Enterprise Edition (J2EE) and non-J2EE programs through programmatic interfaces. The administrative console provides a Graphical User Interface (GUI) with which you can configure the job scheduler, to define the service policies with which WebSphere Extended Deployment decides where and when to start Compute Grid jobs jobs.

The job management console allows Compute Grid administrators and submitters to view, manage and perform job related actions that include submitting a job, viewing of jobs, canceling or suspending a job, and resuming a suspended job. Through the job management console, you can submit job schedules with a preferred processing time. Also, you can configure job schedules so that they can recur on a specific time of day or week, and so on.

The job scheduler accepts, persists, and schedules the execution of Compute Grid jobs. It manages the job database, assigns job IDs, and selects where and when jobs run. As part of performing this function, the job scheduler starts and stops instances of dynamic clusters as dictated by the jobs to be run and defined service policies. This is analogous to the function provided by the application placement controller for transactional J2EE applications. The job scheduler is a J2EE application that you can make highly available by using application placement controller-provided functionality.

The grid endpoints are application servers that are augmented to provide the runtime environments needed by Compute Grid applications.