pbsacct: A Workload Analysis System for PBS-Based HPC Systems

The PBS family of resource management systems have historically not included workload analysis tools, and the currently available third-party workload analysis packages have often not had a way to identify the applications being run through the batch environment. This paper introduces the pbsacct system, which solves the application identification problem by storing job scripts with accounting information and allowing the development of site-specific heuristics to map job script patterns to applications. The system consists of a database, data ingestion tools, and command-line and web-based user interfaces. The paper will discuss the pbsacct system and deployments at two sites, the National Institute for Computational Sciences and the Ohio Supercomputer Center. Workload analyses for systems at each site are also discussed.