Changes in JURA accounting in ARC versions >= 6.4.0 and more changes in 6.8.0

This document summarises changes in ARC's JURA accounting system introduced in ARC 6.4.0 and those included with ARC 6.8.0

Full information has been issued in the release notes, this document serves as a stand-alone reference of the changes that were made, and outlines some known issues.

As of ARC 6.8.0 the pre-6.4.0 accounting system will be completely removed from the code!

Background

In ARC 6.4.0, the ARC CE JURA accounting subsystem was re-implemented, going from a file-based system to using a local SQLite accounting database to store the A-Rex Accounting Record (AAR) information. AAR defines all accounting information stored about a single ARC CE job.

The new system was implemented to improve scalability, eliminate bottlenecks caused by the legacy architecture and to provide much more information about the ARC CE jobs on site. The publishing and republishing of the records was also improved, in particular APEL received support for summary and sync messages.

Updating ARC

If you update ARC from pre-6.4.0 to a post-6.4.0 version, the switch is done without any intervention necessary, except for two small changes in the arc.conf, see the first two bullet points below.

Some important accounting details:

• The benchmark values should now be configured per-queue [queue:name] instead of the [arex/jura/apel] block. The configuration validator will prevent A-REX from starting if the values are specified in the old way (pre-6.4.0).
• The new system automatically provides archiving of all accounting records in the database, therefore the old way of record archiving via the JURA [arex/jura/archiving] is DEPRECATED. Please remove this block from your arc.conf. The configuration validator will prevent A-REX from starting if the block is present.
• The temporary legacy_fallback option will no longer be available in arc.conf.
• The arcctl accounting command provides a new set of commands for flexible analysis of local accounting data, see documentation.
• The jura command is no longer available.
• APEL publishing now sends summary records instead of individual records by default.
• There will be no more accounting files in the <controldir>/logs folder.
• As of ARC 6.8.0, a default benchmark value can be added to the [lrms] block.

Known issues:

• Accounting records created by ARC 6.4.0 are affected by a bug causing missing benchmark values, see Bugzilla ticket 3921 (comment 3).
  • An update to a newer ARC version fixes this bug.
  • Please read the comment 3 in the bugreport for instructions how to fix the wrong (missing) benchmark values.

Documentation

Documentation for the new accounting can be found in the general ARC documentation. Information about configuration options removed in ARC 6.8.0 can be found in the admin reference guide.