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Altair FlowTracer Administrator Guide
This manual is aimed at the person who will be the administrator for FlowTracer. This person will be responsible for configuring the network resources, setting up the licensing, and establishing security and access rules for the system.
Taskers
A tasker is a VOV client that provides computing resources, specifically CPU cycles, to the vovserver.
The taskers.tcl File
The taskers.tcl file describes the taskers for a project.

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Altair FlowTracer Administrator Guide
This manual is aimed at the person who will be the administrator for FlowTracer. This person will be responsible for configuring the network resources, setting up the licensing, and establishing security and access rules for the system.
- FlowTracer Roles
  When using FlowTracer in large deployments, three main roles emerge: Administrator, Developer and User. In smaller organizations, a given person may have multiple roles, but the duties of each role still exist.
- Enable CLI Access on UNIX
  This section explains how to set up a UNIX user's shell environment to have a proper context for the user to run installed Altair Accelerator programs from the command line. The programs that are run from the command line are called the CLI commands.
- Enable CLI Access on Windows
  This section explains how to set up a Window user's command prompt environment to have the proper context for the user to run installed Altair Accelerator programs from the command line. The programs that are run from the command line are called the CLI commands.
- User Interfaces
- Use FlowTracer Help
  FlowTracer documentation is available in HTML and PDF format.
- Projects
- Server Working Directory
  When a project is created, a server working directory (.swd directory) is created to hold configuration and state information about the project.
- Alerts
  VOV issues an "alert" when an event requires attention. An alert can range from information that does not require action to an urgent fault that requires immediate action.
- Manage the Server for a Project
- Security
  The VOV security model consists of assigning a Security Code to each client or client group (VovUser Group) and granting the permission to execute critical tasks only to clients with the appropriate security level.
- Taskers
  A tasker is a VOV client that provides computing resources, specifically CPU cycles, to the vovserver.
  - Tasker Compatibility
    When a job becomes eligible to run, VOV places it on the fastest vovtasker host which offers all the resources requested when the job was submitted. The Tasker Compatibility page in the web browser UI shows details of a job's compatibility with each vovtasker machine. You can use this page to understand why a job seems stuck.
  - The taskers.tcl File
    The taskers.tcl file describes the taskers for a project.
  - vtk_tasker_define
    There are many options that can be used with vtk_tasker_define and vtk_tasker_set_default.
  - vovtaskermgr
    The main way to start, configure, and stop the taskers is with the vovtaskermgr command. This command acts relative to the VOV-project enabled in the shell where it is issued.
  - Tasker ID
    Each tasker is an object in the VOV database and therefore it has its own VovId.
  - Tasker Attributes
    A tasker is characterized by several attributes. These attributes are controllable by means of the command line arguments to the vovtasker binary as well as by means of the procedure vtk_tasker_define in the taskers.tcl configuration file for a VOV project.
  - Tasker Configuration Parameters
  - Tasker Power
    Upon startup, the vovtasker computes the raw power of the CPU on the current host by timing a known test routine consisting of a balanced mix of integer, double and string operations. The power is inversely proportional to the time it takes to execute the test routine.
  - Tasker RAM Saturation
  - Connect a Single Tasker
  - Tasker Status
  - Monitor Taskers
    To monitor the activity of the taskers, use either vsm from the CLI, or click Console > Vov Monitor from the GUI.
  - Tasker Resources
    The resources offered by a tasker are represented by a space-separated list of tokens. Resources can be explicit or symbolic.
  - The taskerClass.table File
  - Time-Variant Taskers
    Time-variant taskers resources can be configured using Tcl. Any procedure can be defined in the namespace VovResources and then used to compute the resource list.
  - Predefined VovResources:: Procedures
    This section describes the predefined procedures that can be used to characterize the taskers in your farm in a time-variant fashion. To use these procedures, you have to use them as resources for a tasker.
  - Tasker Reservations
  - Tasker Owner
    The program vovtaskerowner gives the owner of a machine the control on the tasker running on such machine.
  - Start a Remote UNIX Tasker Details
    On UNIX, the script vovtaskerstartup is used to start a tasker on a remote machine.
  - Stop Taskers
    When you no longer need a tasker that you started manually and that is running in the foreground, stop it with Ctrl-C.
- Interfaces to Accelerator, SGE, LSF, and Others
  FlowTracer can be used also as a front end to an existing batch processing system (BPS), for example, Accelerator, LSF, SGE, SGEEE, etc.
- Configuration for Elastic Computing
- Configuration for Altair Accelerator
- Configure a Failover Server Replacement
  If a server crashes suddenly, VOV has the capability to start a replacement server on a pre-selected host. This capability requires that the pre-selected host is configured as a failover server.
- Advanced Information
- Multi-User Altair FlowTracer
  FlowTracer now supports a "multi-user" mode of operation, as a Beta feature. In the multi-user mode, many different users can share the same project, in terms of modifying a flow as well as running different compoments of the flow.
- IT Administrator Topics
- Special Issues
- Miscellaneous
Altair FlowTracer Developer Guide

View All Altair Accelerator Help

The taskers.tcl File

The taskers.tcl file describes the taskers for a project.

The taskers.tcl file is a Tcl script based on the procedure vtk_tasker_define. The synopsis for this procedure:

vtk_tasker_define hostname [options]

The two following examples both declare three taskers on the hosts apple orange and pear:

# Fragment of taskers.tcl file
vtk_tasker_define apple
vtk_tasker_define orange 
vtk_tasker_define pear

# Fragment of taskers.tcl file
foreach host {apple orange pear} {
    vtk_tasker_define $host
}

The following procedure supports many options to define the characteristics of the tasker. The options include "-resources <string>" to set the resource list offered by a tasker and -CPUS n to define the number of CPUs in a machine. In the following example, the tasker on apple is set up to offer the resource "big_memory":

# Fragment of tasker file
vtk_tasker_define apple  -resources "@STD@ big_memory" -CPUS 2
vtk_tasker_define orange -resources "@STD@ big_memory" -CPUS 2
vtk_tasker_define pear   -resources "@STD@ big_memory" -CPUS 4

The default value for all options can be changed with the following procedure vtk_tasker_set_defaults, as shown below:

# Fragment of taskers.tcl file
vtk_tasker_set_default -resources "@STD@ big_memory" -CPUS 2
vtk_tasker_define apple  
vtk_tasker_define orange 
vtk_tasker_define    -CPUS 4