Patent ID: 7490325

Claim:
A computer-implemented method of performing intelligent data pre-staging for a job submitted to a compute environment, the method comprising: determining availability of compute resources in a cluster or grid environment including availability timeframes of the compute resources to process the submitted job; determining data requirements for processing the job; determining a co-allocation in time reservation by: (1) requesting resources for a first step in the job process based on the determined availability and/or the determined data requirements; (2) calculating existing resource guarantees and reservations already in place to create an availability range list; (3) converting the availability range list into a start range list; (4) requesting another resource for a next step in the job process and returning to step (2) until all resources for all steps in the job process are requested; (5) shifting start ranges in the start range list by an offset and performing an intersection operation on a combination start range; (6) shifting the start ranges back by a negative of the offset, wherein resulting information provides when to start each reservation; (7) presenting to a user a final list of selectable starting times for a reservation; and (8) upon receiving a user selection of a reservation start time, establishing a co-allocation in time reservation for resources for an appropriate start time; and performing data pre-staging based on the co-allocation in time reservation and prior to processing the job in the compute environment.