Define condensed host groups

You can define condensed host groups to display information for its hosts as a summary for the entire group. This is useful because it allows you to see the total statistics of the host group as a whole instead of having to add up the data yourself. This allows you to better plan the distribution of jobs submitted to the hosts and host groups in your cluster.

To define condensed host groups, add a CONDENSE column to the HostGroup section. Under this column, enter Y to define a condensed host group or N to define an uncondensed host group, as shown in the following:

Begin HostGroup
GROUP_NAME   CONDENSE   GROUP_MEMBER
groupA          Y       (hostA hostB hostD)
groupB          N       (hostC hostE)
End HostGroup

The following commands display condensed host group information:

  • bhosts

  • bhosts -w

  • bjobs

  • bjobs -w

Use bmgroup -l to see whether host groups are condensed or not.

Hosts belonging to multiple condensed host groups

If you configure a host to belong to more than one condensed host group using wildcards, bjobs can display any of the host groups as execution host name.

For example, host groups hg1 and hg2 include the same hosts:

Begin HostGroup
GROUP_NAME      CONDENSE    GROUP_MEMBER        # Key words
hg1               Y         (host*)
hg2               Y         (hos*)
End HostGroup

Submit jobs using bsub -m:

bsub -m "hg2" sleep 1001

bjobs displays hg1 as the execution host instead of hg2:

bjobs
JOBID   USER    STAT  QUEUE      FROM_HOST   EXEC_HOST   JOB_NAME   SUBMIT_TIME
520     user1   RUN   normal     host5       hg1        sleep 1001 Apr 15 13:50
521     user1   RUN   normal     host5       hg1        sleep 1001 Apr 15 13:50
522     user1   PEND  normal     host5                  sleep 1001 Apr 15 13:51

Import external host groups (egroup)

When the membership of a host group changes frequently, or when the group contains a large number of members, you can use an external executable called egroup to retrieve a list of members rather than having to configure the group membership manually. You can write a site-specific egroup executable that retrieves host group names and the hosts that belong to each group. For information about how to use the external host and user groups feature, see External Host and User Groups.

Parent topic: Host groups