GridLink Current Release

AXIS GridLink Controller runs as a Windows service on a machine on the server farm. When a job is submitted to the farm, it receives the request, submits it to a queue and then launches the AXIS master and helpers of the specified version to run the job. In addition, it allows the user to monitor the status of the running job upon request (through the GridLink Utility).

AXIS GridLink Utility runs on the farm administrator's local machine and allows the administrator to remotely configure AXIS GridLink Controllers without logging on to the server. The utility is password-protected. The default password is "Admin" (case-sensitive). The administrator can change the password through the utility.

Please note that AXIS GridLink Controller and GridLink Utility can only run on Windows XP Professional, Vista, Windows 7, Server 2003, Server 2008 and HPC Server, and the AXIS GridLink Module requires the AXIS GridLink Module Licence.

Current GridLink Release The current version of AXIS GridLink is 4.42 (July 9, 2010). Click Here to download the GridLink installation package (GridLinkUtil442.exe) Please download GridLink, run it to install GridLink Utility, and then run GridLink Utility to install GridLink Controller Service remotely on all GridLink servers. Please read the "Installation Guide" for more details about installation steps. "Release Notes" for historical GridLink versions can be found here.

Release Notes for Version 4.42 (July 9, 2010)

Bug Fixes

• GridLink - The Run Order of Batches Might Not Be Preserved When GridLink Local Cache Was Enabled (Job #28630)

When GridLink Local Cache was enabled, if the user submitted multiple batches and some of them were in the same datasets and some of them were in different datasets, the run order might not be preserved.

This bug was introduced in GridLink version 4.40 - 19 Apr 10, and has now been fixed in GridLink version 4.42.

Release Notes for Version 4.41 (June 16, 2010)

Bug Fixes

• GridLink - Licence Information Not Updated Immediately (Job #28453)

When a user updated the licence file on the farm, and if all the following were true:

1. Either the old licence file or the new one contained more than one master server, and
2. There was a job running on the farm, or the farm was idling, but there was a job that just finished within 10 minutes.

Then the licence information was not updated on the farm immediately.

Workaround: Stop all running jobs. The internally cached licence information is refreshed automatically after 10 minutes.

This bug was introduced in GridLink version 4.00 - 03 Jul 09, and has now been fixed in GridLink version 4.41.

• GridLink - False Warning Message Was Reported When GridLink Local Cache Is Enabled (Job #28539)

If GridLink Local Cache is enabled, the user may see a warning message in the Remote Job Monitor on a finished job:

"The original dataset has been updated successfully, although the following warning was logged during clean-up:

Cannot delete file (path name)\Info.axs. The process cannot access the file because it is being used by another process. (32)"

This is a false warning message. The user can safely ignore it.

This bug was introduced in GridLink version 4.40 - 19 Apr 10, and has now been fixed in GridLink version 4.41.

• GridLink - Minimum Number Of CPU Cores In Licence File (Job #28544)

GridLink master didn’t work if this job queue licence had less than 16 processor cores.

This bug was introduced in GridLink version 1.30 - 06 Sep 05, and has now been fixed in GridLink version 4.41.

Release Notes for Version 4.40 (April 19, 2010)

Enhancements

• GridLink - Dataset Local Cache For Master  (Job #26825)

In the case that you have a dataset stored on a remote drive on the network, you can instruct the AXIS master to use a local copy of the dataset when running a batch job in it.

This feature is controlled by GridLink so it applies to all AXIS versions.

To access this setting, run GridLink Utility, go to "Farm Profile - Farm Settings - Data Caching tab", select "Enable GridLink Local Cache" option, and specify a shared directory on a local drive for each master server.

Before a run starts, if the dataset is not stored under the master’s local directory, it will be copied to the master’s local directory and this local copy will be used during the run. The original dataset will be updated when the run is finished.

Please note that this feature is not supported for System batches (except for "Dataset Recalculation" Batch).

• GridLink - Suspend / Resume Multiple Jobs  (Job #23685)

In the remote job monitor, the user can now select multiple pending/suspended jobs and suspend/resume them.

Bug Fix

• GridLink - Couldn't Specify The Number Of Job Slots For Each Master Server (Job #27945)

The user couldn’t specify a different number of job slots for each master server using the "Farm Settings" dialog.

The workaround is to right-click on a master server and specify the number of job slots here.

This bug was introduced in GridLink version 4.20 - 09 Dec 09, and has now been fixed in GridLink version 4.40.

• GridLink - Drive Mapping Error Not Recovered On Helper Server (Job #27967)

If all the following conditions are true:

1. a mapped drive was specified in the Farm Profile
2. the GridLink controller running on a helper server failed to map a drive on start up
3. after the service was started, the drive mapping problem was fixed outside GridLink (e.g. a failed file server was rebooted)
4. Access Group was not used

then this helper server would not be able to launch helpers for a job that used this mapped drive despite that the mapping problem was fixed.

The workaround:

1. run GridLink Utility, open "Farm Settings" dialog, remove the mapped drive from the farm settings and apply it to the farm. Then open "Farm Settings" dialog again to add this mapped drive back.

or

2. restart GridLink service on this helper server

This bug was introduced in GridLink version 4.00 - 03 Jul 09, and has now been fixed in GridLink version 4.40.

• GridLink - Controller Couldn't Close A Hung Helper (Job #28084)

In the following case:

1. A job is submitted to a GridLink farm
2. A helper is started on the same machine as the master
3. The job has finished but this helper hangs

Then the controller may not be able to terminate this helper. It appears to hang too, until the helper is terminated by the user.

This bug was introduced in GridLink version 1.30 - 06 Dec 05 and has now been fixed in GridLink version 4.40.

• GridLink - Controller Might Crash When A Job Was Resubmitted (Job #28160)

When a job was resubmitted by a user from the remote job monitor, the controller might crash in rare cases.

This bug was introduced in GridLink version 3.40 -10 Dec 07 and has now been fixed in GridLink version 4.40.

GridLink Related Jobs Implemented in AXIS (not in GridLink module)

Bug Fix

AXIS 12602001

• Block Recalculation Run Might Produce Incorrect Results When GridLink Shuts Down Helpers  (Job #28062)

When a batch is running on a GridLink farm using "Cell Distribution" mode, if a helper is shut down by GridLink (because another job started in another job queue, or the resource priority of the current job has been decreased) and this helper has calculated some cells before, in rare cases, the results created by this helper might be discarded, or the master hangs.

When this happens, you will find an information message "2788 - Master failed to merge results. Details: Some Block result files from helpers were not created successfully. The results may have been recovered by redistributing cells. See other messages for details" in the batch log, but you don’t see messages indicating those cells have been recovered.

The workaround is to use one job queue on the farm.

This bug was introduced in version 12.5 - 14 Aug 09 (12501001), and has now been fixed.

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Compatibility

GridLink works with AXIS versions from 11.3.02.001. Since new features are added frequently, new version of AXIS may not work with older GridLink versions. In this case, GridLink may need to be upgraded. The following table is a version chart for your reference. A green cell means this version of AXIS is compatible with this version of GridLink.

GridLink Versions	AXIS Versions
	11302001	…	11403001	…	11501001	…	12001001	…	12601001	…
1.0x
1.1x
1.2x
1.3x
1.4x
1.5x
1.6x
2.0x
2.1x
2.2x
2.3x
4.3x ... ... ...