A Steering Portal for Condor/DAGMAN

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A Steering Portal for Condor/DAGMAN

• Naoya Maruyama on behalf of Akiko Iino
• Hidemoto Nakada, Satoshi MatsuokaTokyo Institute
  of Technology

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Background

• Common Grid Usage Scenario
• Zillions of Batch Jobs scheduled over combination
  of private/public resources within a VO
• Some Jobs require steering during workflow
• Human decision required
• Most previous steering work focused on GUI-level
  interactivity
• Real-time, interactive steering of the
  application itself
• Does not meld well with batch jobs
• Need significant application customizations

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Objectives and Contributions

• Objectives
• A Steering Portal for workflow (DAGMAN) jobs with
  easy descriptions, w/o application, Condor, or
  DAGMAN modifications
• Contributions
• Portal to allow steering with simple additions to
  DAGMAN scripts
• Confirmed low overhead with exemplar applications
• Quantitative assessment of user steps required

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Outline

• Background
• Motivating example
• Required features of steering
• Steering example
• Overview and prototype implementation
• Evaluation
• Conclustion

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Exemplar ApplicationPhylogenetic Tree Inference

• Infer phylogenetic relationships between
  different species from their genomic
  sequencesHasegawaShimodaira04
• App Characteristics
• Basically execute multiple parallel jobs in
  sequence
• gt Workflow of batch jobs
• But difficult to judge the termination condition
  of the application phases
• gt Need human steering

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Phylogenetic Tree Inference Breakdown
Narrow down on the candidate phylogenetic
treesHard to automategtbatch jobs difficult
Compute Posterior Probability MrBayes
Compute likelihood value PAML
TestCONSEL
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List of Applications in the WF
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The Actual Workflow

• Exec. MrBayes
• Termination Judgement
• Manutal input of new parameters
• Post-Process MrBayes
• Execute PAML
• Execute CONSEL

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Need Steering
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MrBayes Example and Problems

• As a standalone app, requests interactive input
• Up to a user to judge computational convergence
• But lacks info display to allow good judgment
• Not on this screen!

1.User needs to periodically poll his screen and
make interactive input 2.Also look at output
files from 1000 jobs!
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MrBayes Examples and Problems (2)
Decide onConvergence
Decide on next parameter
Visualize
Output file
Problems 3.Manual conversion to graphical
display 4.Changing appropriate parameters
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Outline

• Background
• Motivating example
• Required features of steering
• Steering example
• Overview and prototype implementation
• Evaluation
• Conclustion

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Steering portal features for batch workflows with
interactivity elements

• Pausing/resuming computation
• Progress computation as much as possible until
  user input is absolutely needed
• Resume immediately after input
• Allow flexible parameter modifications
• Various ways to specify parameters for output and
  input
• Various ways to notify users interactive
  screen, email, etc.
• Various ways of parameter observations various
  portal functions
• Various ways to modify parameters
• Even switching back and forth between your
  terminal and from a cell phone 10,000 miles away!

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Outline

• Background
• Motivating example
• Required features of steering
• Steering example
• Overview and prototype implementation
• Evaluation
• Conclustion

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Example (1) Job submission

• Standard Condor/DAGMAN job submission
• But includes steering functions in job
  description

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Example (2) User Notification

• Various notification methods, incl. email
• Displays Portal URL in the message
• Works on various devices incl. cell phones

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Example (3) Steering Portal
Visualize current status
Continuing of Workflow
Portal generating steering web pages dynamically
depending on workflow context
Parameter Input
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Outline

• Background
• Motivating example
• Required features of steering
• Steering example
• Overview and prototype implementation
• Evaluation
• Conclustion

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Overview of our Steering Portal
Workflow and Steering description
DAGMAN/Condor
Individual job submissions
submission
Condor Pool
POST Scripting Features
Retry Function
Steering notification
Steering PortalUser NotificationWeb page
generationand Job control
Steeringdisplay
Steeringinput
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Overview of Steering Portal (2)

• The user defines several steering components for
  the steering portal, defining in a script below
• A set of applications in the workflow
• CondorDAGManSteering workflow description
• Translator for converting output to input to
  continue workflow
• Visualization program to display application
  output on steering web page
• Application input/output specifications
• Parameters that require steering
• The Steering portal does
• Read the above script
• Automatically generate steering web page
• Interact with DAGMAN to notify users (email,
  etc.) and take input from the web portal

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Prototype Implementation

• Coordination between DAGMAN and Steering Portal
• Use DAGMan POST Scripting function to invoke the
  steering portal
• Use DAGMan Retry function to resume workflow
  execution
• Prototype Implementation of the Steering Portal
• Interpretation of the steering descriptions
  embedded in DAGMAN workflow
• Appropriate and multiple notifications and
  steering interfaces available
• Notification and interfaces currently selected
  according to script
• Automated selection for the future
• Mail and messaging notification function with
  embedded services
• CGI web page generation onto the portal sever
  using ssh
• Steering from anywhere, anytime (incl. cell
  phones and PDAs

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Outline

• Background
• Motivating example
• Required features of steering
• Steering example
• Overview and prototype implementation
• Evaluation
• Conclustion

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Evaluation

• Apply to sample applications (simple pi
  calculation and more complex phylogenetic tree
  example)
• Evaluate the necessary work steps
• Items of Evaluation
• Modification to the application program itself
• CondorDAGMan workflow description
• Translator for converting input to output to
  continue workflow
• Visualization program to display application
  output on steering web page
• Application input/output specifications
• Parameters that require steering
• Modifications to the Condor Job submit file

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Sample Pi Program
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Phylogenetic Tree Program
(1) 20 9-line files, only 1 line differsamongst
them
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Conclusion and Future Work

• Conclusion
• Proposed a Steering Portal that allows
  interactive steering of batch scheduled jobs in
  Condor/DAGMAN
• Created prototypes with flexible notification and
  visualization/steering features
• Applied to sample apps including Pi and
  Phylogenetic trees
• Future work
• Support and automatically select various
  interfaces
• Apply to other application, esp. with larger
  workflows and more complex interactions
• Apply to other workflow engines

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• Contact info
• Satoshi Matsuoka, matsu_at_is.titech.ac.jp, Tokyo
  Institute of Technology