Workstation
Read this section for information about the use of workstations for scheduling jobs and job streams. If, instead, you want to learn about workstations because you are planning your network, you can find the information you need in the HCL Workload Automation: Planning and Installation.
The computer system where you run your jobs and job streams is called a workstation. When you define a job or job stream in the HCL Workload Automation database you identify the workstation definitions for the physical or virtual computer systems on which your job is scheduled to run. Workstations can be grouped logically into workstation classes and organized hierarchically into domains, managed by domain managers.
For more information about workstation classes, see Workstation class, and for domains, see Domain.
When you create a workstation definition for a system in your network you define a set of characteristics that uniquely identify the system and affect the way jobs run on it. Some examples of these characteristics are the IP address of the workstation, if it is positioned behind a firewall, the secure or unsecure communication, the time zone where the workstation is located, and the identity of its domain manager.
Workstations in the HCL Workload Automation scheduling
network perform job and job stream processing, but can also have other
roles. When your network was designed, these roles were assigned to
these workstations to suit the specific needs of your business. The
following list describes all the workstation roles:
- Master domain manager
- A workstation acting as the management hub for the network. It manages all your scheduling objects. This workstation is registered in the HCL Workload Automation database as master.
- Backup master domain manager
- A workstation which can act as a backup for the master domain manager, when problems occur. It is effectively a master domain manager, waiting to be activated. Its use is optional. Learn more about switching to a backup master domain manager in the HCL Workload Automation: Administration Guide. This workstation must be installed as "master domain manager configured as backup". This workstation is registered in the HCL Workload Automation database as fta.
- Domain manager
- A workstation that controls a domain and shares management responsibilities for part of the HCL Workload Automation network. It is installed as an agent, and then configured as a domain manager workstation when you define the workstation in the database. This workstation is registered in the HCL Workload Automation database as manager.
- Dynamic domain manager
- An installed component in a distributed HCL Workload Automation network
that is the management hub in a domain. All communication to and from
the agents in
the domain is routed through the dynamic domain manager.
When you install a dynamic domain manager the
following workstation types are created in the database:
- fta
- Fault-tolerant agent component manually configured as domain manager
- broker
- Broker server component
- agent
- Dynamic agent component
- Backup dynamic domain manager
- A workstation that can act as a backup for the dynamic domain manager when
problems occur. It is effectively a dynamic domain manager,
waiting to be activated. Its use is optional. Learn more about switching
to a backup dynamic domain manager in
the HCL Workload Automation: Administration Guide.
When you install a dynamic domain manager the
following workstation types are created in the database:
- fta
- Fault-tolerant agent component.
- broker
- Broker server component
- agent
- Dynamic agent component
- Fault-tolerant agent
- A workstation that receives and runs jobs. If there are communication problems with its domain manager, it can run jobs locally. It is installed as an agent, and then configured as a fault-tolerant agent workstation when you define the workstation in the database. This workstation is registered in the HCL Workload Automation database as fta.
- Standard agent
- A workstation that receives and runs jobs only under the control of its domain manager. It is installed as an agent, and then configured as a standard agent workstation when you define the workstation in the database. This workstation is registered in the HCL Workload Automation database as s-agent.
- Extended agent
- A workstation on which an HCL Workload Automation access method has been installed as a bridge so that you can schedule jobs in the SAP R/3, Oracle E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft, z/OS, or custom applications. It must be physically hosted by a master domain manager, domain manager, standard agent, or a fault-tolerant agent (up to 255 extended agents per fault-tolerant agent) and then defined as an extended agent in the database. For more information, see the HCL Workload Automation User's Guide. This workstation is registered in the HCL Workload Automation database as x-agent.
- Workload broker
- A workstation that runs both existing job types and job types with advanced options.
It is the broker server installed with the master domain manager and
the dynamic domain manager.
It can host one or more of the following workstations:
- Extended agent
- Remote engine
- Pool
- Dynamic pool
- Agent. This definition includes the following agents:
- Agent
- IBM Workload Scheduler for z/OS Agent
- Agent for z/OS
For more information about the agent and IBM Workload Scheduler for z/OS Agent, see Scheduling Workload Dynamically. For more information about the agent for z/OS, see Scheduling with the agent for z/OS.
- Dynamic agent
- A workstation that
manages a wide variety of job types, for example, specific database
or FTP jobs, in addition to existing job types. This workstation is
automatically created and registered in the HCL Workload Automation database
when you install the agent.
The agent is
hosted by the workload broker workstation.
Because the installation and registration processes are performed
automatically, when you view the agent in
the Dynamic Workload Console,
it results as updated by the Resource Advisor Agent. You can group agents in
pools and dynamic pools. This workstation is registered
in the HCL Workload Automation database
as agent.In a simple configuration, dynamic agents connect directly to a master domain manager or to a dynamic domain manager. However, in more complex network topologies, if the network configuration prevents the master domain manager or the dynamic domain manager from directly communicating with the dynamic agent, then you can configure your dynamic agents to use a local or remote gateway.Note: If you have the enAddWorkstation global option set to "yes", the dynamic agent workstation definition is automatically added to the Plan after the installation process creates the dynamic agent workstation in the database.
- Pool
- A logical workstation that
groups a set of agents with
similar hardware or software characteristics to which to submit jobs. HCL Workload Automation balances the jobs among the agents within the pool and automatically
reassigns jobs to available agents if an agent is no longer
available. To create a pool of agents in your HCL Workload Automation environment, define a workstation of
type pool hosted by the workload broker workstation, then select the agents you
want to add to the pool. You can define the pool using the Dynamic Workload Console or the composer command.
This workstation is registered in the HCL Workload Automation database as pool. When you create a pool in your HCL Workload Automation environment, a logical resource with the same name is automatically created in the Dynamic Workload Broker. This logical resource is used to correlate and group together the agents belonging to the same pool, and as a requirement for the jobs scheduled in the HCL Workload Automation pool. Consider that these database objects are two different objects. If you rename the HCL Workload Automation pool, this change is not made to the Dynamic Workload Broker logical resource.
You can also register an agent with a pool by directly editing the
pools.properties file located in
<TWS_home>/ITA/cpa/config. See
Automatically register agents to pools for more details.
See the topic about automatically registering agents to a pool in the Planning and Installation.
- Dynamic pool
- A logical workstation that groups a set of agents,which is dynamically defined based on the resource requirements you specify and hosted by the workload broker workstation. For example, if you require a workstation with low CPU usage and Windows installed to run your job, you specify these requirements using the Dynamic Workload Console or the composer command. When you save the set of requirements, a new workstation is automatically created in the HCL Workload Automation database. This workstation maps all the agents in your environment that meet the requirements you specified. The resulting pool is dynamically updated whenever a new suitable agent becomes available. Jobs scheduled on this workstation automatically inherit the requirements defined for the workstation. This workstation is hosted by the workload broker workstationand registered in the HCL Workload Automation database as d-pool.
- Remote engine
- A workstation that manages the exchange of information about cross dependencies resolution between your environment and a remote HCL Workload Automation engine (controller) or an HCL Workload Automation engine (master domain manager or backup master domain manager). This workstation is hosted by the workload broker workstation and registered in the HCL Workload Automation database as rem-eng.
Note: If you plan to change the
workstation types, consider the following rules:
- You can change fault-tolerant agent, standard agent, extended agent, domain manager and dynamic workload broker workstations to any workstation type, with the exception of dynamic agent, pool, dynamic pool, and remote engine.
- You cannot change the type of dynamic agent, pool, dynamic pool, and remote engine.
For information about how to define workstations, see Workstation definition.