Job Queue Manager for Windows XP Pro

thealchemist

Junior Member
Jul 19, 2008
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Hi,

As part of my work I have 5 computers all of which use Windows XP Pro (they are NOT linked to any server) and are independent of each other. I use them to run some proprietary software (some FORTRAN based executable) which are reasonably long and CPU and memory intensive. So am limited by number of processors on each machine (4 in each case).

So far I keep a track of which job has finished and then submit another job to run as and when the processor gets free. At a time only 4 jobs are running (besides other processes which are OS-based). So obviously there are times when I I am looking for a utility I can install (or may be a batch script) which I can use to manage the jobs equivalent to the ones we have available for Unix or VAX/VMS machines/clusters.

Another help I am looking for is how to make a cluster out of my 5 machines ... is there a way that I can link up these 5 machines to avoid logging into each individually and managing jobs on each separately? Will I need to install a server OS or is there any other way to do it? In short, how can I manage jobs remotely on 5 different machines without a cluster? If this is not possible what is the easiest way to convert it into a cluster?

Thanks in advance.

Al.
 

nova2

Senior member
Feb 3, 2006
982
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you could use psexec (microsoft/sysinternals) to send remote commands to the computers and if you used cygwin cron, control it via psexec.
 

thealchemist

Junior Member
Jul 19, 2008
9
0
0
nova2,

Thanks for this ... will explore it in detail on Monday ... the articles I find online seem to suggest that this might work and its simple!

Thanks again.

Al.
 

nova2

Senior member
Feb 3, 2006
982
1
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if you ever get 'access denied' problems using psexec then try running psexec using the system account switch (psexec -s)
fixed the problem for me.