Re: [patch 0/8] CKRM: Core patch set

From: Paul Jackson
Date: Wed Mar 30 2005 - 20:37:52 EST


Diego wrote:
> I bet I'm not the only one here
> who can't understand it either.....

You're not alone.

See an email thread entitled:

Classes: 1) what are they, 2) what is their name?
http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?thread_id=5328162&forum_id=35191

on the ckrm-tech@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx email list between Aug 14 and Aug
27, 2004, where I did my best to encourage the CKRM project to address
this problem. To no avail.

Apparently, to some of the smartest amongst us, who got to hear
live presentations describing CKRM, it makes sense and is worthy
of serious consideration.

For myself, of more ordinary intelligence and working just from the
documentation and an occassional glance at the code, it has been a
difficult proposal to understand, with a rather large patch requiring
some non-trivial kernel hooks.

A question for the CKRM developers:

What middleware packages, outside the kernel, exist or are
in the works that will rely on CKRM?

CKRM (like another project near and dear to me, cpusets)
strikes me as a "middleware foundation" facility, intended
to provide the essential kernel support required for some
serious enterprise software. So perhaps in addition to
asking what end-users (of a combined kernel-middleware
platform) exist, we should also be asking who will be
directly using CKRM - directly layering middleware on top
of it.

The details don't matter much and may have to remain
obscured in the competitive fog. But the presence of
multiple groups lobbying for the same kernel infrastructure,
as an apparent basis for competing middleware products,
would I think weigh in CKRM's favor.

My impression, which may not align with how the CKRM developers view
things, is that CKRM is descendent from what have been called fair-share
schedulers. The following comes from the above email thread.

No doubt the CKRM experts are already familiar with these, but for the
possible benefit of other readers:

UNICOS Resource Administration - Chapter 4. Fair-share Scheduler
http://oscinfo.osc.edu:8080/dynaweb/all/004-2302-001/@Generic__BookTextView/22883

SHARE II -- A User Administration and Resource Control System for UNIX
http://www.c-side.com/c/papers/lisa-91.html

Solaris Resource Manager White Paper
http://wwws.sun.com/software/resourcemgr/wp-mixed/

ON THE PERFORMANCE IMPACT OF FAIR SHARE SCHEDULING
http://www.cs.umb.edu/~eb/goalmode/cmg2000final.htm

A Fair Share Scheduler, J. Kay and P. Lauder
Communications of the ACM, January 1988, Volume 31, Number 1, pp 44-55.


--
I won't rest till it's the best ...
Programmer, Linux Scalability
Paul Jackson <pj@xxxxxxxxxxxx> 1.650.933.1373, 1.925.600.0401
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