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VOV Subsystem Administrator Guide
This manual provides information about managing a VOV project, including starting the server and connecting computing resources such as computers and licenses.
Taskers
A tasker is a VOV client that provides computing resources, specifically CPU cycles, to the vovserver.
The taskerClass.table File

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VOV Subsystem Administrator Guide
This manual provides information about managing a VOV project, including starting the server and connecting computing resources such as computers and licenses.
- Client/Server Architecture
  All of Altair Accelerator's products are based on a client/server architecture to support concurrent activities, team coordination, distributed data management, and distributed processing. The program vovserver runs in the background as a service to implement the main product features. It is the server.
- VOV Projects
  A "project" is a named collection of jobs, together with all the files that are used and produced by those jobs. The contents of VOV projects can be custom organized.
- VOV Registry
  The VOV Registry contains the list of all projects known to an installation of Altair Accelerator software. The registry is used by the vovproject command, and stores metadata such as the host machine and port number of a project.
- Get Started
- Start and Configure the Server
- Connect to a Project
- Stop the Server
- Recovery and Redundancy
- Files, Equivalences, Exclusions
  The files used in a project reside in one or more directories spread all around your filesystems. Each logical name defined in the equiv.tcl file implicitly declares the root of a workspace. You can browse the workspaces using the browser interface.
- 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.
  - 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.
  - Autokill of Jobs by vovtasker
  - 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 Policies
- 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.
- Advanced Tasker Topics
- Resource Management
  Altair Accelerator includes a subsystem for managing computing resources. This allows the design team to factor in various constraints regarding hardware and software resources, as well as site policy constraints.
- IT Administrator Topics
VOV Subsystem Reference Guide
EDA Tool Integration Guide
This document is a collection of techniques that have proven to be useful when applying FlowTracer in Electronic Design Automation.

The taskerClass.table File

This file allows the classification of taskers without requiring the taskers to be restarted. The file taskerClass.table resides in the server configuration directory (that is, the directory $VOV_PROJECT_NAME.swd). Each tasker checks the file for changes about once a minute.

The file consists of lines with the following format:

<taskername>:  <resource list>
(default):  <resource list>

All lines that do not conform to this format are ignored. The taskername begins at the beginning of the line. If the tasker name is the string (default), the line indicates the default value of the resource list. Note that (default) is not a legal tasker name because it contains the characters () which are not allowed in tasker names.

# Example of taskerClass.table file
(default):  classC

ferrari:  classA classB
buick:    classA
dodge:    classB