Load indices are built-in resources that measure the availability of static or dynamic, non-shared resources on hosts in the LSF cluster.
Load indices built into the LIM are updated at fixed time intervals.
External load indices are defined and configured by the LSF administrator, who writes an external load information manager (elim) executable. The elim collects the values of the external load indices and sends these values to the LIM.
The status index is a string indicating the current status of the host. This status applies to the LIM and RES.
The possible values for status are:
The r15s, r1m and r15m load indices are the 15-second, 1-minute and 15-minute average CPU run queue lengths. This is the average number of processes ready to use the CPU during the given interval.
On UNIX, run queue length indices are not necessarily the same as the load averages printed by the uptime(1) command; uptime load averages on some platforms also include processes that are in short-term wait states (such as paging or disk I/O).
On multiprocessor systems, more than one process can execute at a time. LSF scales the run queue value on multiprocessor systems to make the CPU load of uniprocessors and multiprocessors comparable. The scaled value is called the effective run queue length.
LSF also adjusts the CPU run queue based on the relative speeds of the processors (the CPU factor). The normalized run queue length is adjusted for both number of processors and CPU speed. The host with the lowest normalized run queue length runs a CPU-intensive job the fastest.
The ut index measures CPU utilization, which is the percentage of time spent running system and user code. A host with no process running has a ut value of 0 percent; a host on which the CPU is completely loaded has a ut of 100 percent.
The pg index gives the virtual memory paging rate in pages per second. This index is closely tied to the amount of available RAM memory and the total size of the processes running on a host; if there is not enough RAM to satisfy all processes, the paging rate is high. Paging rate is a good measure of how a machine responds to interactive use; a machine that is paging heavily feels very slow.
The ls index gives the number of users logged in. Each user is counted once, no matter how many times they have logged into the host.
On UNIX, the it index is the interactive idle time of the host, in minutes. Idle time is measured from the last input or output on a directly attached terminal or a network pseudo-terminal supporting a login session. This does not include activity directly through the X server such as CAD applications or emacs windows, except on Solaris and HP-UX systems.
On Windows, the it index is based on the time a screen saver has been active on a particular host.
The tmp index is the space available in MB on the file system that contains the temporary directory:
The swp index gives the currently available virtual memory (swap space) in MB. This represents the largest process that can be started on the host.
The mem index is an estimate of the real memory currently available to user processes. This represents the approximate size of the largest process that could be started on a host without causing the host to start paging.
LIM reports the amount of free memory available. LSF calculates free memory as a sum of physical free memory, cached memory, buffered memory and an adjustment value. The command vmstat also reports free memory but displays these values separately. There may be a difference between the free memory reported by LIM and the free memory reported by vmstat because of virtual memory behavior variations among operating systems. You can write an ELIM that overrides the free memory values returned by LIM.
The io index measures I/O throughput to disks attached directly to this host, in KB per second. It does not include I/O to disks that are mounted from other hosts.
The lsinfo -l command displays all information available about load indices in the system. You can also specify load indices on the command line to display information about selected indices:
The lsload -l command displays the values of all load indices. External load indices are configured by your LSF administrator: