Re: [HTCondor-users] Linux Jobs in a Windows Lab

[Eric Sedore <essedore@xxxxxxx>]

Good evening Chris,

 

We’ve used virtualization to allow Windows machines (not just labs, but faculty and staff machines as well) to support linux workloads.  The linux VM(s) (which has HTCondor installed) on the client machine is launched when the computer goes idle.  There are a large number of details that I am skipping over, but hopefully you at least get a quick sketch of our approach. I would be happy to connect with you offline to give you a better idea of how it is put together.

 

Thanks,

-Eric

 

From: HTCondor-users [mailto:htcondor-users-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Hendricksen, Christopher Erik
Sent: Tuesday, April 24, 2018 4:33 PM
To: htcondor-users@xxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [HTCondor-users] Linux Jobs in a Windows Lab

 

Hi all,

 

We’d like to start running htcondor on our lab machines, but the problem we’re facing is that most of our jobs are linux jobs and most of our lab machines are Windows machines. I wanted to ask what other people in this situation are doing. I’ve considered a few options but have run into problems with each.

 

Docker – Using docker to run jobs would be great since our Windows, OS X, and Linux machines should all be able to handle Docker universe jobs, but I haven’t been able to get Docker working with HTCondor on Windows (I can provide more info here if needed)

 

Dual Boot – We only have limited space on our drives, and I would be hard pressed to permanently set aside enough space to run a useful htcondor environment. It would also be a lot of extra work maintaining another OS. Also this would only be an option when the lab is closed (ideally idle machines would be available whether or not the lab is closed).

 

PXE Boot to linux environment – I don’t know if this is even an option, but it may be a way to dual boot without having to permanently dedicate space on the local drive.

 

WSL – I’m not sure the Windows Subsystem for Linux will be robust enough to handle the jobs that we might get.

 

If anyone has any suggestions, I’d really appreciate it. Or if you’ve gotten Docker to work with htcondor in windows, I’d be interested in hearing how.

 

Thank you in advance,

 

-Chris

 

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Chris Hendricksen, PhD

Senior Academic IT Specialist

University of Illinois | Technology Services

Instructional Computing Services