Section: Software and Platforms

TakTuk - Adaptive large scale remote execution deployment

Participants : Guillaume Huard [correspondant] , Pierre Neyron.

• Characterization of Software : A-2 / SO-3 / SM-5 / EM-3 / SDL-4

• Own Contribution: DA-4 / CD-4 / MS-4 / TPM-4

• Additional information:

  • web site: http://taktuk.gforge.inria.fr , Coordinator G. Huard

  • Objective of the software: TakTuk is a tool for deploying parallel remote executions of commands to a potentially large set of remote nodes. It spreads itself using an adaptive algorithm and sets up an interconnection network to transport commands and perform I/Os multiplexing/demultiplexing. The TakTuk mechanics dynamically adapt to environment (machine performance and current load, network contention) by using a reactive work-stealing algorithm that mixes local parallelization and work distribution.

  • Users community: TakTuk is a research open source project available in the Debian GNU/Linux distribution (package taktuk) used in lower levels of Grid5000 software architectures (nodes monitoring in OAR, environment diffusion in Kadeploy). The community is small : developers and administrators for large scale distributed platforms, but active.

  • Positioning: main competing tools are pdsh (but uses linear deployment) and gexec (not fault tolerant, requires installation), for more details : B. Claudel, G. Huard and O. Richard. TakTuk, Adaptive Deployment of Remote Executions. In Proceedings of the International Symposium on High Performance Distributed Computing (HPDC), 2009. TakTuk is the only tool to provide to deployed processes a communication layer (just like an MPIrun, but not tied to a specific environment) and synchronization capabilities.