Poolsel

Poolsel is a software component that selects among multiple resource pools to host workloads in distributed computing environments. It provides a policy-driven mechanism for mapping tasks to pools, aiming to optimize utilization, locality, and SLA compliance.

Functionality: Poolsel exposes an interface (command-line and programmatic API) for evaluating candidate pools. It scores pools according to defined criteria such as capacity, current load, QoS requirements, hardware type, and location. Administrators define pools and policies in a configuration file. The selection can be deterministic or stochastic, and can consider constraints like affinity, anti-affinity, or maintenance windows.

Architecture: A pool registry stores the available pools and their attributes. A policy engine evaluates rules against real-time metrics provided by a metrics adapter. A selection engine returns the chosen pool and triggers downstream schedulers or orchestrators via an integration layer.

Config and operation: Pools are described with attributes (capacity, type, location, SLA). Policies express scoring rules and constraints. Poolsel can run as a persistent service or as a callable library within schedulers. It supports pluggable adapters for metric sources and pool abstractions.

Use and adoption: Intended for data centers, HPC clusters, and multi-tenant cloud environments. It helps decouple workload scheduling from the specifics of each pool provider, enabling more flexible resource allocation. Because poolsel is not standardized, different projects implement variations in interfaces and data models.

See also: resource scheduler, pool allocator, policy engine, workload orchestration.