Chapter 2: Getting started
After installation, you will need to perform certain steps to prepare Moab Accounting Manager to fulfill its desired role in your environment.
Moab Accounting Manager can be configured in a myriad of use cases. It can be used in different contexts such as cloud or High Performance Computing (HPC). It can be used in different accounting modes such as for usage tracking, notional charging or allocation enforcement. This chapter will walk through a characteristically typical example of initializing Moab Accounting Managerfor use in a High Performance Computing environment to strictly enforce allocation limits.
The remainder of this chapter will demonstrate examples for initializing Moab Accounting Manager for use in a High Performance Computing environment to strictly enforce allocation limits while tracking job resource usage. Sample initialization steps for other accounting modes can be found in Appendix B: Alternate accounting modes.
In a typical HPC use case, credits are allocated to accounts for designated time periods, establishing limits on the use of compute resources. You can define the Moab Accounting Manager base currency credits in terms of system resource units (e.g. Processor-Hours) or a real currency (e.g. U.S. dollars). Charge rates are established for the use of resources in jobs. Accounts are created and users are given access to the appropriate accounts. Deposits are made into funds associated with the accounts creating allocations. An allocation cycle can be established whereby funds are reset on a regular periodic basis (such as yearly, quarterly, or monthly) where allocations are renewed for select accounts.
Before a job is started, Moab Workload Manager will verify that the user has sufficient credits to run the job by attempting to place a hold against their funds (referred to as a lien). When a job completes, the user's funds will be debited via a charge, usage information will be recorded for the job and the lien will be removed. Users or managers can query the status of their allocations or details of their job charges and resource utilization.
You will need to be a Moab Accounting Manager System Administrator to perform the tasks in this chapter. It is assumed that you have already installed and bootstrapped Moab Accounting Manager and started the server before performing the steps suggested in this chapter.