FBSNG is a batch system designed for a farm architecture. Traditional batch system features such as job submission, job queueing, and load balancing are built into the system. FBSNG inherits fundamental design ideas from its predecessor FBS. Most important difference between FBSNG and FBS is that FBSNG is complete batch system and it does not rely on any external software such as LSF.

Major features of FBSNG are:

Parallel Batch Jobs

FBSNG job is a collection of sections. Each section is an array of identical, potentially co-operating, processes running on one or more farm nodes (worker nodes). User may specify conditional dependencies of sections of the same job on one another.

Flexible Farm Configuration

FBSNG Administrator defines the farm configuration in terms of computational resources such as CPU power, disk storage, magnetic tape drives available on each farm node (worker node). FBSNG allows unlimited number of resources of several types to be defined for the farm.

Dynamic Farm Configuration

FBSNG Administrator can modify farm configuration using interactive configuration utility or GUI without re-starting FBSNG. Dynamic farm configuration functionality is also provided through FBSNG API.

Load Balancing

FBSNG requires users to specify amount of resources required for each batch process and each section as a whole. Based on such resource requirements, current availability of the resources on the farm, and other farm configuration parameters, FBSNG Scheduler makes the decision when and where to start the batch process.

Scheduler

FBSNG has fully customizable Scheduler. It allows to be set up to achieve a variety of different configurations based on particular installation requirements.

API

FBSNG provides Application Programming Interface (API). API allows users and administators to develop custom job monitoring, control and farm configuration tools. Currently, only Python binding of API is available.

Kerberos Support

FBSNG v1.2 optionally supports Kerberos-based user authentication. Kerberos credentials are created for batch processes.