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Altair Allocator Administrators Guide
Allocator works in conjunction with license monitoring and workload scheduling solutions such as Monitor and Accelerator.
PBS and Other Queues
Allocator can allocate licenses across multiple schedulers, including Accelerator queues, PBS clusters and others. In this section we discuss how to integrate Allocator and PBS.
Configure an LSF or OpenLava elim
In order to configure LSF or OpenLava, you need to be an LSF expert. You need to know where your lsf.conf and lsf.shared files reside and how to configure "elims".

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What's New
View new features for Allocator 2025.1.0.
Allocator Overview
Discover the available Altair Allocator guides.
Allocator Tutorials
Examine the Case Study for a complex Allocator example.
Altair Allocator Administrators Guide
Allocator works in conjunction with license monitoring and workload scheduling solutions such as Monitor and Accelerator.
- Introduction
  Allocator works in conjunction with license monitoring and workload scheduling solutions such as Monitor and Accelerator.
- Start, Stop and Monitor Allocator
- Sharing Licenses Across Multiple Sites
- Configure Allocator
  To configure Allocator, you need to create a file called config.tcl. This is the only file required for configuring Allocator.
- Allocator Procedures
  In this section, the procedures that may be used in the Allocator configuration file are described.
- Procedures Backward Compatibility
  The previous section described the procedures that may be used in the Allocator configuration file. The new procedures are under the Tcl namespace LA; they should be prefixed with LA::
- Allocator Usage Examples
  This section contains simple examples about using Allocator to solve common problems of sharing licenses between sites.
- Map Host Names
  In several points in the systems, it is useful to get the host name for a checkout, for a job, for a daemon, etc. Since every machine may be known by different names, it is important to provide the expert user with the ability to map host names to some canonical form of the host name.
- Resource Groups
  The notion of a "resource group" in Allocator is useful when you have a resource that is derived from multiple sources.
- Allocator and TIMEVAR
  To make the weights of Allocator change as a function of time, you can use the procedure TIMEVAR.
- Passive Mode
- License Overbooking
- Overbooking in Allocator
- Debugging
- View Allocation Details
- Multiple Queues
- PBS and Other Queues
  Allocator can allocate licenses across multiple schedulers, including Accelerator queues, PBS clusters and others. In this section we discuss how to integrate Allocator and PBS.
  - Configure an LSF or OpenLava Queue
    The configuration of an LSF or OpenLava queue uses the procedure LA::AddSite.
  - Configure an LSF or OpenLava elim
    In order to configure LSF or OpenLava, you need to be an LSF expert. You need to know where your lsf.conf and lsf.shared files reside and how to configure "elims".

View All Altair Accelerator Help

Configure an LSF or OpenLava elim

In order to configure LSF or OpenLava, you need to be an LSF expert. You need to know where your lsf.conf and lsf.shared files reside and how to configure "elims".

Note: The LSF interface is no longer supported. The underlying API will be removed in a future release.

Here is an example of one elim implemented as an infinite loop where a file generated by Allocator is read every few seconds:

#!/bin/csh -f

while (1)
    # The lsfUni.elim file is created by Allocator
    /bin/cat /remote/cadmgr/lsf_la_dir/in.elim/lsfUni.elim
    sleep 20
end

Specify the license resources in the file lsf.shared in the Resource section:

AstroLic                        Numeric 10 N (FlexNet Publisher License Resource)
CalibredrcLic                   Numeric 10 N (FlexNet Publisher License Resource)

Specify at least one elim shared license in ResourceMap section in the lsf.cluster.<lsfClusterName> file.

Begin ResourceMap
RESOURCENAME  LOCATION
 tmp2           [default]
 # nio           [all]
 # console       [default]
 #cpuf           [10@localhost]
 #ncpus          [10@localhost]
 AstroLic       [default]
End ResourceMap

To verify that your setup is working, check the following commands:

bhosts -l            #--- Displays available licenses if elim is working correctly.
lshosts -R resource  #--- List the hosts where the resources are available.
lsinfo               #--- Lists all resources.

For example:

% lshosts -R AstroLic

The "elim process" run all that time if everything is configured correctly.

Troubleshooting elims

Problem

Cannot start lim, in the lim.log.<host_name>, getting the following error message

setMyClusterName(): unable to find the cluster file
          containing local host localhost

Solution

Make sure the host name in lsf.cluster.<cluster_name>, in host section, is the name that you are getting with hostname -f command. You can modify the /etc/hosts file to change this hostname.

Problem

bhosts -s resource (ex:

bhosts -s
                                VerdiX

) is saying "Bad resource name"

Solution

Add the resource in the lsf.cluster.lava file under ResourceMap section. Example:

Begin ResourceMap
RESOURCENAME    LOCATION
VerdiX          [all]
primetimeX      [all]
End ResourceMap