Conventions

15.3.3 Workload Event Format

Moab workload accounting records fully describe all scheduling relevant aspects of batch jobs including resources requested and used, time of all major scheduling events (such as submission time and start time), the job credentials used, and the job execution environment. Each job trace is composed of a single line consisting of white space delimited fields as shown in the following table.

Moab can be configured to provide this information in flat text tabular form or in XML format conforming to the SSS 1.0 job description specification.

• Workload Event Record Format
• Creating New Workload Accounting Records/Traces
• Reservation Records/Traces
• Recording Job events

15.3.3-A Workload Event Record Format

All job events (JOBSUBMIT, JOBSTART, JOBEND, and so forth) provide job data in a standard format as described in the following table:

Field Name	Field Index	Data Format	Default Value	Details
Event Time (Human Readable)	1	HH:MM:SS	-	Specifies time event occurred.
Event Time (Epoch)	2	<epochtime>	-	Specifies time event occurred.
Object Type	3	job	-	Specifies record object type.
Object ID	4	<STRING>	-	Unique object identifier.
Object Event	5	one of jobcancel, jobcheckpoint, jobend, jobfailure, jobhold, jobmigrate, jobpreempt, jobreject, jobresume, jobstart or jobsubmit	-	Specifies record event type.
Nodes Requested	6	<INTEGER>	0	Number of nodes requested (0 = no node request count specified).
Tasks Requested	7	<INTEGER>	1	Number of tasks requested.
User Name	8	<STRING>	-	Name of user submitting job.
Group Name	9	<STRING>	-	Primary group of user submitting job.
Wallclock Limit	10	<INTEGER>	1	Maximum allowed job duration (in seconds).
Job Event State	11	<STRING>	-	Job state at time of event.
Required Class	12	<STRING>	[DEFAULT:1]	Class/queue required by job specified as square bracket list of <QUEUE> [:<QUEUEINSTANCE>] requirements. (For example: [batch:1]).
Submission Time	13	<INTEGER>	0	Epoch time when job was submitted.
Dispatch Time	14	<INTEGER>	0	Epoch time when scheduler requested job begin executing.
Start Time	15	<INTEGER>	0	Epoch time when job began executing. This is usually identical to Dispatch Time.
Completion Time	16	<INTEGER>	0	Epoch time when job completed execution.
Required Node Architecture	17	<STRING>	-	Required node architecture if specified.
Required Node Operating System	18	<STRING>	-	Required node operating system if specified.
Required Node Memory Comparison	19	one of >, >=, =, <=, <	>=	Comparison for determining compliance with required node memory.
Required Node Memory	20	<INTEGER>	0	Amount of required configured RAM (in MB) on each node.
Required Node Disk Comparison	21	one of >, >=, =, <=, <	>=	Comparison for determining compliance with required node disk.
Required Node Disk	22	<INTEGER>	0	Amount of required configured local disk (in MB) on each node.
Required Node Attributes/Features	23	<STRING>	-	Square bracket enclosed list of node features required by job if specified. (For example: [fast][ethernet])
System Queue Time	24	<INTEGER>	0	Epoch time when job met all fairness policies.
Tasks Allocated	25	<INTEGER>	<TASKS REQUESTED>	Number of tasks actually allocated to job. In most cases, this field is identical to field #7, Tasks Requested.
Required Tasks Per Node	26	<INTEGER>	-1	Number of Tasks Per Node required by job or '-1' if no requirement specified.
QOS	27	<STRING> [:<STRING>]	-	QoS requested/assigned using the format <QOS_REQUESTED> [:<QOS_DELIVERED>]. (For example: hipriority:bottomfeeder)
JobFlags	28	<STRING> [:<STRING>]...	-	Square bracket delimited list of job attributes. (For example: [BACKFILL][PREEMPTEE])
Account Name	29	<STRING>	-	Name of account associated with job if specified.
Executable	30	<STRING>	-	Name of job executable if specified.
Resource Manager Extension String	31	<STRING>	-	Resource manager specific list of job attributes if specified. See the Resource Manager Extension Overview for more information.
Bypass Count	32	<INTEGER>	-1	Number of times job was bypassed by lower priority jobs via backfill or '-1' if not specified.
ProcSeconds Utilized	33	<DOUBLE>	0	Number of processor seconds actually used by job.
Partition Name	34	<STRING>	[DEFAULT]	Name of partition in which job ran.
Dedicated Processors per Task	35	<INTEGER>	1	Number of processors required per task.
Dedicated Memory per Task	36	<INTEGER>	0	Amount of RAM (in MB) required per task.
Dedicated Disk per Task	37	<INTEGER>	0	Amount of local disk (in MB) required per task.
Dedicated Swap per Task	38	<INTEGER>	0	Amount of virtual memory (in MB) required per task.
Start Date	39	<INTEGER>	0	Epoch time indicating earliest time job can start.
End Date	40	<INTEGER>	0	Epoch time indicating latest time by which job must complete.
Allocated Host List	41	<hostname> [,<hostname>]...	-	Comma delimited list of hosts allocated to job. (For example: node001,node004)
Resource Manager Name	42	<STRING>	-	Name of resource manager if specified.
Required Host List	43	<hostname> [,<hostname>]...	-	List of hosts required by job. (If the job's task count is greater than the specified number of hosts, the scheduler must use these nodes in addition to others; if the job's task count is less than the specified number of hosts, the scheduler must select needed hosts from this list.)
Reservation	44	<STRING>	-	Name of reservation required by job if specified.
Application Simulator Data	45	<STRING> [:<STRING>]	-	Name of application simulator module and associated configuration data. (For example: HSM:IN=infile.txt:140000;OUT= outfile.txt:500000)
Set Description	46	<STRING>: <STRING> [:<STRING>]	-	Set constraints required by node in the form <SetConstraint>:<SetType>[:<SetList>] where SetConstraint is one of ONEOF, FIRSTOF, or ANYOF, SetType is one of PROCSPEED, FEATURE, or NETWORK, and SetList is an optional colon delimited list of allowed set attributes. (For example: ONEOF:PROCSPEED:350:450:500)
Job Message	47	<STRING>	-	Job messages including resource manager, scheduler, and administrator messages if specified.
Job Cost	48	<DOUBLE>	0.0	Cost of executing job incorporating resource consumption metric, resource quantity consumed, and credential, allocated resource, and delivered QoS charge rates.
History	49	<STRING>	-	List of job events impacting resource allocation (XML). History information is only reported in Moab 5.1.0 and higher.
Utilization	50	Comma-delimited list of one or more of the following: <ATTR>= <VALUE> pairs where <VALUE> is a double and <ATTR> is one of the following: network (in MB transferred), license (in license-seconds), storage (in MB-seconds stored), or gmetric:<TYPE>.	-	Cumulative resources used over life of job.
Estimate Data	51	<STRING>	-	List of job estimate usage.
Completion Code	52	<INTEGER>	-	Job exit status/completion code.
Extended Memory Load Information	53	<STRING>	-	Deprecated. Extended memory usage statistics (max, mem, avg, and so forth).
Extended CPU Load Information	54	<STRING>	-	Extended CPU usage statistics (max, mem, avg, and so forth).
Generic Metric Averages	55	<STRING>	-1	Generic metric averages.
Effective Queue Duration	56	<INTEGER>	-1	The amount of time, in seconds, that the job was eligible for scheduling.
Job Submission Arguments	57	<STRING>	-	The job's submit arguments and script. This field is enabled by setting STOREJOBSUBMISSION to TRUE.

If no applicable value is specified, the exact string - should be entered.

Fields that contain a description string such as Job Message use a packed string format. The packed string format replaces white space characters such as spaces and carriage returns with a hex character representation. For example a blank space is represented as \20. Since fields in the event record are space delimited, this preserves the correct order and spacing of fields in the record.

Sample Workload Trace

13:21:05 110244355 job 1413 JOBEND 20 20 josh staff 86400 Removed [batch:1] 887343658 889585185 \
889585185 889585411 ethernet R6000 AIX53 >= 256 >= 0 - 889584538 20 0 0 2 0 test.cmd \
1001 6 678.08 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 - 0 - - - - - - - - 0.0 - - - 0 - -

15.3.3-B Creating New Workload Simulation Traces

Because workload event records and simulation workload traces use the same format, these event records can be used as a starting point for generating a new simulation trace. In the Moab simple case, an event record or collection of event records can be used directly as the value for the SIMWORKLOADTRACEFILE as in the following example:

1. # collect all job records for July
   > cat /opt/moab/stats/events.*July*2012 | grep JOBEND > /opt/moab/DecJobs.txt        

2. edit moab.cfg for use job records
   > vi /opt/moab/etc/moab.cfg
     (add 'SIMWORKLOADTRACEFILE /opt/moab/DecJobs.txt')    
   

In the preceding example, all non-JOBEND events were filtered out. This step is not required but only JOBEND events are used in a simulation; other events are ignored by Moab.

Modifying Existing Job Event Records

When creating a new simulation workload, it is often valuable to start with workload traces representing a well-known or even local workload. These traces preserve distribution information about job submission times, durations, processor count, users, groups, projects, special resource requests, and numerous other factors that effectively represent an industry, user base, or organization.

When modifying records, a field or combination of fields can be altered, new jobs inserted, or certain jobs filtered out.

Because job event records are used for multiple purposes, some of the fields are valuable for statistics or auditing purposes but are ignored in simulations. For the most part, fields representing resource utilization information are ignored while fields representing resource requests are not.

Modifying Time Distribution Factors of a Workload Trace

In some cases, simulations focus on determining the effects of changing the quantities or types of jobs or on changing policies or job ownership to see changes to system performance and resource utilization. However, other times simulations tend to focus on response-time metrics as job submission and job duration aspects of the workload are modified. Which time-based fields are important to modify depend on the simulation purpose and the setting of the JOBSUBMISSIONPOLICY parameter.

Dispatch Time should always be identical to Start Time.

In all cases, the difference of 'Completion Time - Start Time' is used to determine actual job run time.

System Queue Time and Proc-Seconds Utilized are only used for statistics gathering purposes and will not alter the behavior of the simulation.

In all cases, relative time values are important, i.e., Start Time must be greater than or equal to Submission Time and less than Completion Time.

Creating Workload Traces From Scratch

There is nothing which prevents a completely new workload trace from being created from scratch. To do this, simply create a file with fields matching the format described in the Workload Event Record Format section.

15.3.3-C Reservation Records/Traces

All reservation events provide reservation data in a standard format as described in the following table:

15.3.3-D Recording Job Events

Job events occur when a job undergoes a definitive change in state. Job events include submission, starting, cancellation, migration, and completion. Some site administrators do not want to use an external accounting system and use these logged events to determine their clusters' accounting statistics. Moab can be configured to record these events in the appropriate event file found in the Moab stats/ directory. To enable job event recording for both local and remotely staged jobs, use the RECORDEVENTLIST parameter. For example:

RECORDEVENTLIST JOBCANCEL,JOBCOMPLETE,JOBSTART,JOBSUBMIT
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Related topics 

• Event Logging Overview
• SIMWORKLOADTRACEFILE