Using TA Agents

If you have installed two or more Tidal Automation (TA) Agents for Windows or UNIX on separate machines, you can perform the procedures in this chapter. If you have only one agent, you may still want to read this chapter to understand how other agents are integrated in Tidal Automation.

In previous exercises, you scheduled jobs to run on the Tidal Automation master system which included an agent of its own. You can also run jobs on multiple external agents. Agents let you expand your computing power and flexibility, helping you get jobs done more quickly and efficiently.

For a Tidal Automation master to recognize an agent, the Tidal Automation agent software must be installed on that agent machine, and a valid license file must exist for it on the master. Refer to the Tidal Automation Installation and Configuration Guide for more information on licensing and registering agents.

The TA master provides centralized control over scheduling in a distributed computing environment. There is no limit on how many agents you can attach to a master, if your license contains the unlimited (floating) provision for agents. You can also schedule a job to run on any agent in your network.

Tidal Automation lets you group multiple agents into sets called agent lists.

When you associate one of these lists with a job, Tidal Automation launches that job depending on the type of list:

  • Ordered List – Runs on the first agent available in the list, chosen sequentially from the top of the list

  • Balanced List – Runs on the agent with the lightest load at the time the job is ready to run.

  • Random List – Runs on an agent picked at random from the list.

  • Rotation List – Runs on the agent following the last agent used for execution.

  • Broadcast List – Runs on all agents in the list.

In this chapter, you learn how to run a job on an external agent. You will also learn how to create an inter-agent dependency, that is, a dependency on a job that runs on a different machine. We will add an agent and run a job that is located on it.

To complete the exercises in this tutorial, you need to:

  • Install Tidal Automation in the TA default directory (or the examples in this tutorial will not work properly).

  • Select the Super User option in your User definition.

  • Configure a default agent.

  • Create and have available the work day calendar.