Basic Terms

Applies To: Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003

The following table contains a list of terms basic to an understanding of the topics that follow.

Term	Definition
Job	A job is a resource request submitted to the Job Scheduler that contains or will contain one or more tasks.
Task	A task is the execution of a user application. A task cannot be run independently of a job. However, it is possible for a job to contain only a single task.
Job Scheduler	Job Scheduler is a service responsible for queuing jobs and tasks, allocating resources, dispatching the tasks to the compute nodes, and monitoring the status of the job, tasks, and nodes.
Node	A node is a single named host in the cluster.
Processor	A processor is an individual CPU on a node. Typically, a 64-bit node has two or more processors. A dual-core processor is usually considered two processors.
Queue	The queue is a list of jobs that have been submitted to Job Scheduler for execution by the cluster. The order of the jobs in the queue is determined by a set of scheduling policies.
Task List	The task list is the task equivalent of the queue for an individual job. The order of the tasks is first come, first served (FCFS) unless dependencies dictate otherwise.