Introduction

Allocator works in conjunction with license monitoring and workload scheduling solutions such as Monitor and Accelerator.

It keeps track of total number of licenses in the pool and those in use, and it allocates available licenses across geographic sites and business units via comprehensive resource management policies.

Another facet of sharing software resources across multiple sites is having clear visibility into how licenses are being utilized across an organization, along with the ability to prioritize and allocate licenses based on organizational needs.

Allocator gives organizations the software license policy management features they need to adjust license allocation and maximize the utilization of their software assets. Allocator’s advanced features provide the most comprehensive license management and allocation solution available:
  • Allocator’s metrics provide visibility into license utilization history and status across multiple sites
  • Overbooking allows greater utilization of licenses
  • Allocator’s advanced matching algorithm, including matching by process ID (PID), allows for more accurate allocation of licenses across sites
  • Organizations can set internal license management policies by setting a maximum number of licenses that can be allocated to any given site

Allocator with Accelerator

Allocator greatly enhances Accelerator with these features:
  • Supports LSF clusters.
  • Provides new set of graphical historical reports that show how Allocator allocated licenses across the sites.
  • Operates with its own vovserver.

Because of its descendancy from MultiQueue, there are several instances of "MQ" in the name of the commands, procedures, directories. Altair Allocator is the name of the new product; MultiQueue is the name of the previous daemon that was attached to an Accelerator instance.

Licensing of Allocator

The la project requires the following licenses:
  • One token of the license feature "server_la"
  • Multiple tokens of the license feature "jobs_la", as determined by the total number of running jobs detected by the system

Should a license violation occur, an alert will be issued. Currently, all functionality will continue to be in place; this policy may change.

Common Commands in Allocator

The following commands are available in Allocator:
  • lamgr: The tool to start and stop Allocator
  • vovshow -la
  • vovshow -la all
  • vovshow -la inuse
  • vovshow -la alloc
  • vovshow -la queued
  • vovshow -lares <NAME_OF_RESOURCE>
  • vovla_gui -r <NAME_OF_RESOURCE>
The following system commands are new and called only by Allocator.
Note: These commands are not intended to be used by administrators or users; they are to be called only by Allocator.
  • vovlalm: Probe a Monitor instance
  • vovlanc: Probe an Accelerator instance
  • vovlalsf: Probe LSF