hostwhether

Hostwhether is a term used to describe a boolean decision predicate in distributed systems that determines whether a given host (node) is eligible to host a particular workload. The word blends “host” with “whether,” signaling a yes/no evaluation that governs task placement. It is not a standardized term in all environments but is encountered in theoretical discussions, scheduling literature, and some open-source materials as a conceptual utility.

In practice, hostwhether is implemented as a function or policy within a scheduler. It evaluates a range of factors, including current resource availability (CPU, memory, I/O), host health and readiness, maintenance or cordon status, taints and tolerations, locality constraints, and any organization-specific policies. The output is a boolean: true indicates the host should be considered for assignment, while false excludes it from consideration.

Usage examples tend to illustrate hostwhether as a filtering step in the scheduling pipeline. A typical rule might require that a host is not cordoned, has sufficient free resources, and meets policy constraints. If all conditions are satisfied, hostwhether returns true and the host enters the candidate pool for further scoring.

Relation to other concepts includes predicate logic, feasibility checks, and resource-aware scheduling. While not a universal term, hostwhether reflects common practice in designing modular, policy-driven schedulers that separate eligibility from selection. See also: scheduling, feasibility, predicates, taints and tolerations.