Job with multiple tasks on different servers - ruby

Question

I need to have a Job with multiple tasks, being run on different machines, one after another (not simultaneously), and while the current job is running, another same job can arrive to the queue, but should not be started until the previous one has finished. So I came up with this 'solution' which might not be the best but it gets the job done :). I just have one problem.
I figured out I would need a JobQueue (either MongoDb or Redis) with the following structure:
{
hostname: 'host where to execute the task',
running:FALSE,
task: 'current task number',
tasks:{
[task_id:1, commands:'run these ecommands', hostname:'aaa'],
[task_id:2,commands:'another command', hostname:'bbb']
}
}
Hosts:
search for the jobs with same hostname, and running==FALSE
execute the task that is set in that job
upon finish, host sets running=FALSE, checks if there are any other tasks to perform and increases task number + sets the hostname to the next machine from the next task
Because jobs can accumulate, imagine situation when jobs are queued for one host like this: A,B,A
Since I have to run all the jobs for the specified machine how do I not start the 3rd A (first A is still running)?

Answer 1

{
_id : ObjectId("xxxx"), // unique, generated by MongoDB, indexed, sortable
hostname: 'host where to execute the task',
running:FALSE,
task: 'current task number',
tasks:{
[task_id:1, commands:'run these ecommands', hostname:'aaa'],
[task_id:2,commands:'another command', hostname:'bbb']
}
}
The question is how would the next available "worker" know whether it's safe for it to start the next job on a particular host.
You probably need to have some sort of a sortable (indexed) field to indicate the arrival order of the jobs. If you are using MongoDB, then you can let it generate _id which will already be unique, indexed and in time-order since its first four bytes are timestamp.
You can now query to see if there is a job to run for a particular host like so:
// pseudo code - shell syntax, not actual code
var jobToRun = db.queue.findOne({hostname:<myHostName>},{},{sort:{_id:1}});
if (jobToRun.running == FALSE) {
myJob = db.queue.findAndModify({query:{_id:jobToRun._id, running:FALSE},update:{$set:{running:TRUE}}});
if (myJob == null) print("Someone else already grabbed it");
else {
/* now we know that we updated this and we can run it */
}
} else { /* sleep and try again */ }
What this does is checks for the oldest/earliest job for specific host. It then looks to see if that job is running. If yes then do nothing (sleep and try again?) otherwise try to "lock" it up by doing findAndModify on _id and running FALSE and setting running to TRUE. If that document is returned, it means this process succeeded with the update and can now start the work. Since two threads can be both trying to do this at the same time, if you get back null it means that this document already was changed to be running by another thread and we wait and start again.
I would advise using a timestamp somewhere to indicate when a job started "running" so that if a worker dies without completing a task it can be "found" - otherwise it will be "blocking" all the jobs behind it for the same host.
What I described works for a queue where you would remove the job when it was finished rather than setting running back to FALSE - if you set running to FALSE so that other "tasks" can be done, then you will probably also be updating the tasks array to indicate what's been done.