ActiveBatch® Three Tier Scaleable Architecture

The ActiveBatch® architecture provides for a coordinated approach that schedules and manages batch jobs across today's heterogeneous systems environments. Windows 2000/NT is the core scheduling and management platform by which all jobs are centrally managed and monitored. ActiveBatch dispatches jobs and tasks for execution across an evolving range of platforms including Windows 2000/NT/Me/9x, Linux/UNIX and OpenVMS.

The three tier architecture consists of a client interface, job scheduler and execution agents. All three tiers can run on one machine or be completely distributed to many machines.

Scaleable

ActiveBatch’s powerful queuing system allows for the creation of Execution or Generic Queues. An Execution Queue represents a machine and the "queue" is a priority ordered list of jobs which are either pending awaiting execution or actually executing. A Generic Queue represents a "virtual" machine and consists of one or more Execution Queues.

The key benefit to Generic Queues is the ability to abstract the actual machine the job may run on. This allows ActiveBatch, using the job’s run-time characteristics and requirements, to select the system best suited to execute the specific job. The job’s author or operator may further indicate that a workload balancing algorithm be used to match an available job to the least utilized machine. A variety of scheduling algorithms are employed to ensure that the job is sent to a specific system or the first available processor that meets the needs as defined in the job’s properties.

Interfaces

ActiveBatch offers a very powerful graphical interface for coordinated job management and control. The ActiveBatch Admin user-interface component provides a GUI orientation for quick access to the system. Job author’s also have the ability to execute command line utilities and/or script ActiveBatch objects and operations using the product’s COM interface. ActiveBatch supports the VTBL and Automation interfaces. ActiveBatch Administrators can also use the Microsoft Management Console Snap-in for a coordinated console view of all associated activities and tasks.

Using ActiveBatch’s RunBook view you can easily identify jobs, determine their schedule and get status on any supported platform in your enterprise. If you need more information on that job just "drill down" and get complete status and "history" of the job in question. From the RunBook view the operations staff can monitor and manage all jobs across a full range of platforms.

ActiveBatch also incorporates COM and RPC/DCE technologies making programmatic access a snap and our support of Microsoft’s Windows Scripting Host lets you easily script and customize job solutions using the languages that you choose.

Scheduling

Jobs can be scheduled on a date/time, time and event basis. The traditional date/time aspects of scheduling have been further enhanced through the use of scheduling rules such as "the last Thursday of each month" or "every other Friday". Periodic time scheduling similar to the Unix “cron” facility is also available (in fact you can merge the two).

Jobs can also be scheduled on an event basis. ActiveBatch supports the WBEM initiative and specifically Microsoft’s Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) subsystem. WMI, available for Microsoft Windows 2000, Windows® and Windows 9x systems provides the ability to programmatically extract system information and raise events. ActiveBatch supports the use of WMI in two ways. First, job authors can specify that a job is to be executed based on one or more WMI based events. The event specification is coded using Microsoft’s WQL language. Supporting WQL syntax means that customers have the greatest access and flexibility when dealing with WMI events. Second, ActiveBatch itself is also a WMI provider. This means that ActiveBatch can raise WMI events for any of its own operations. This is important in that not only can jobs run based on ActiveBatch’s own events but other third party or customer products can query ActiveBatch about its various objects and run-time performance.

ActiveBatch supports Job Dependencies. Job Dependencies ensure that jobs are executed only after the completion of one or more other batch jobs that they must rely upon. Jobs can support one or more dependencies and the dependencies themselves can be conditional. The job author also has the ability to indicate what should occur should a dependency fail.

ActiveBatch supports Job Triggers. A "Job Trigger" is an ActiveBatch event that triggers a selected batch job for execution. Job Triggers take two forms. One type is known as the "child" trigger that supports the execution of different batch jobs based on whether the parent job completed successfully or failed. The second type is a command-based or programmatic trigger. This type of trigger allows a user, script or program to trigger a pending job for execution.

Job Delegation or "Third-Party" Jobs

ActiveBatch supports the concept of "third-party" jobs. A third-party job is a job that enters a pending state and allows targeted execution based on another user’s requirements. For example, a non-privileged user needs to start several services. The starting of services might require "Administrator" rights. With ActiveBatch you can submit a batch job under the Administrator’s credentials and indicate one or more users or groups that have the ability to trigger execution of the job. You may also allow or disallow the assignment of input parameters to the batch job.

Reliability

ActiveBatch’s Job Restart and Checkpoint capabilities help ensure that jobs that fail can be restarted from the point of failure to ensure that schedules are met. With ActiveBatch’s notification capabilities you define what action should be taken on various success or failure modes that are encountered. Alerts can be sent via "Mail", "Messenger" or by using Job Triggers to start an on-demand job such as paging. And cluster failover is also supported.

Deployment

ActiveBatch’s Job and Machine (Queue) Wizards make it easy to get your jobs up and running on your systems faster than with other solutions. Just answer a few basic questions and ActiveBatch will establish queues and jobs using policies that are tailorable by Administrators.

Security

Jobs are submitted using the security information of the submitting user. Machine/username and passwords may be saved, in a secure manner using the same Windows password facilities, for future use. With ActiveBatch you can avoid the inconvenience and possible security breaches of storing passwords "in the clear" within script files as well as submitting jobs through general “Administrator” accounts.

Job Management and History

ActiveBatch will retain all information regarding the history for each job for operational review. A complete audit trail is also available showing all job state changes. The job retention period is specifiable during setup. Job History will provide information on job completion status, start and stop time, elapsed time and much more. ActiveBatch also provides reporting capabilities based upon the Job History information.

Advanced Features

ActiveBatch allows complete access to WBEM and Microsoft’s WMI technology for handling system and application events. As a result your job is run when needed and useless “polling” is avoided. ActiveBatch’s use of WMI is an ideal way to manage your systems in a scaleable, reliable and unified fashion. For example CPU utilization can be monitored and, when a processor is heavily loaded, an event will be generated by WMI and sent to an appropriate job that has been designed to take corrective action or notify an operator.

Summary

ActiveBatch, the Job Management and Scheduling system that businesses can rely on to execute simple or complex jobs across a variety of platforms!