Managing jobs on remote computers running Windows

Question

I have 10 computers at work all of which have Windows XP (either 32- or 64-bit). Each installation is a separate one and not server-based. I work on different sets of code and to run jobs I have set up batch scripts for each which can take command line arguments.

Now to run any job, I login on the remote computer (via Remote Desktop) and execute it on the command line. I have no way to queue another process since if I overload the processors (i.e. jobs > processors) the run-time on each job takes a huge hit. The Remote Desktop approach is proving to be a huge bottleneck since that means the computers are sitting idle unless I login to check the progress etc. (which can be for long if, for example, I am working on some code development).

Can you suggest any software which will help me in this system? I have tried "psexec" but it does not work properly in the interactive mode. PlatformLSF is very very expensive. The only other software I think may meet my needs is Visualcron (plus its inexpensive) but not so sure about it. Any thoughts on Visualcron?

Answer 1

Powershell and/or VBScript can do what you need, and are free, but will require some coding. It's fairly trivial to set up a VBScript to run remote commands (a quick google search will turn up a lot of hits, check for "vbscript execute remote command").

What I normally do with VBScript when I want to make a "Queue" is to use indicator files, and set up a loop to watch for those files to exist before executing. If you like I can post links to some instructional sites to get started.

For software specifically for this purpose, you may be better off asking on serverfault.com.