Process assignment to classes for workload management

The processes are assigned to a class, using class-assignment rules provided by the system administrator. The classification criteria are based on the value of a set of attributes of the process such as user ID, group ID, name of the application file, type of process, and application tag.

A defined set of rules is used to determine the superclass a process is assigned to. If this superclass has subclasses defined, there is another set of rules for this superclass to determine which subclass is assigned to which process. This automatic assignment process also takes into account the inheritance attributes of both the superclass and the subclass.

The automatic class assignment is done when a process calls the exec subroutine. The class assignment is reevaluated when a process uses a subroutine that can alter a process attribute used for classification purposes. Examples are the setuid, setgid, setpri, and plock subroutines.

In addition to this automatic class assignment, a user with the proper authority can manually assign processes or groups of processes to a specific superclass or subclass.