Predicting Execution Readiness of MPI Binaries with FEAM, a Framework for Efficient Application Migration

Abstract-Today's scientific computing infrastructures provide scientists with easy access to a wide variety of computing resources. However, migrating applications to new computing sites can be tedious and time consuming. When optimal performance is not a concern, scientists can benefit by moving binaries instead of source code. Our work aims to make migration of MPI application binaries more efficient by automation. We present general methods that assess if binaries are a good match for execution at computing sites. We also present methods for increasing execution readiness by resolving missing shared libraries. Our work aims to free scientists from extensive manual preparation at new sites. To evaluate the effectiveness of our methods, we present an automated Linux-based implementation called FEAM, a Framework for Efficient Application Migration. We show that FEAM is more than 90% accurate at predicting execution readiness of MPI application binaries from the NAS Parallel and SPEC MPI2007 benchmark suites. In our evaluation, only half of the migrated binaries execute successfully at sites configured with a matching MPI implementation. We show that by automatically resolving shared libraries requirements, FEAM is able to increase the number of successful executions by a third

Predicting Execution Readiness of MPI Binaries with FEAM, a Framework for Efficient Application Migration

Abstract-As computational science becomes increasingly relevant for performing research, shared computing resources made accessible by cyberinfrastructures emerge as especially valuable for the majority of scientists who have not traditionally been the dominant users of such resources. However, in order to provide these newer computational scientists the opportunities to do great research, the ease-of-use of shared computing resources needs to be increased. In this paper, we present techniques that aim to make the migration to (and between) shared computing resources more efficient. Specifically, we focus on determining whether a computing site is a good fit for running an MPI binary. We present our methods and a Linux-based implementation called FEAM (a Framework for Efficient Application Migration). FEAM predicts execution readiness, resolves missing shared libraries, and composes site-specific configurations. We show that FEAM is more than 90% accurate at predicting execution readiness of MPI application binaries from the NAS Parallel and SPEC MPI2007 benchmark suites. In our evaluation, only half of the migrated binaries execute successfully at sites only configured with a matching MPI implementation. We show that by automatically resolving shared libraries requirements, FEAM is able to increase the number of successful executions by a third