University of Bath

Research Computing Team (DDaT)

Anatra HPC Documentation

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Slurm¶

Overview:

Teaching: 10 min
Exercises: 0 min

Questions

What is a scheduler
How can I use slurm to manage and run my jobs
What slurm commands can I use to explore the system

Objectives

Know that the scheduler manages jobs on the service
Know how to interact with slurm to:
- see what jobs are running
- cancel jobs
- find out information about my jobs

Scheduler¶

Similarly to Balena, Janus, the phase 1 cloud HPC service uses a scheduler to manage how jobs are run and resources are allocated.

If multiple jobs ran on a single node at the same time users would be competing for the same resources and jobs take longer to run overall. A scheduler manages individual jobs, which are allocated to the resources they need as they become available. This results in a higher overall throughput and more consistent performance.

The scheduler used by Janus is the same as that used by Balena, slurm: _Simple Linux Utility for Resource M_anagment.

Slurm: Simple Linux Utility for Resource Managment¶

Interacting with the sceduler is done through the terminal using an array of commands.

Below are a number of key slurm commands:

Slurm command	Function
`sinfo`	View information about SLURM nodes and partitions
`squeue`	List status of jobs in the queue
`squeue --user [userid]`	Jobs by user
`squeue --job [jobid]`	Jobs by jobid
`sbatch [jobscript]`	Submit a jobscript to the scheduler
`scancel [jobid]`	Cancel a job in the queue
`scontrol hold [jobid]`	Hold a job in the queue
`scontrol release [jobid]`	Release a held job
`scontrol show job [jobid]`	View information about a job
`scontrol show node nodename`	Get information of a node

Key Points:

We use a scheduler to manage jobs on the cloud HPC service
Janus uses the slurm scheduler
Key commands are:
- sbatch to submit jobs
- sinfo to view information about the service
- squeue to view the queue
- scancel to delete a job

You can find further information about slurm and the commands here: http://slurm.schedmd.com/