Slurm Workload Manager

Last updated
Slurm
Developer(s) SchedMD
Stable release
Repository
Written in C
Operating system Linux, BSDs
Type Job Scheduler for Clusters and Supercomputers
License GNU General Public License
Website slurm.schedmd.com

The Slurm Workload Manager, formerly known as Simple Linux Utility for Resource Management (SLURM), or simply Slurm, is a free and open-source job scheduler for Linux and Unix-like kernels, used by many of the world's supercomputers and computer clusters.

Contents

It provides three key functions:

Slurm is the workload manager on about 60% of the TOP500 supercomputers. [1]

Slurm uses a best fit algorithm based on Hilbert curve scheduling or fat tree network topology in order to optimize locality of task assignments on parallel computers. [2]

History

Slurm began development as a collaborative effort primarily by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, SchedMD, [3] Linux NetworX, Hewlett-Packard, and Groupe Bull as a Free Software resource manager. It was inspired by the closed source Quadrics RMS and shares a similar syntax. The name is a reference to the soda in Futurama. [4] Over 100 people around the world have contributed to the project. It has since evolved into a sophisticated batch scheduler capable of satisfying the requirements of many large computer centers.

As of November 2021, TOP500 list of most powerful computers in the world indicates that Slurm is the workload manager on more than half of the top ten systems.

Structure

Slurm's design is very modular with about 100 optional plugins. In its simplest configuration, it can be installed and configured in a couple of minutes. More sophisticated configurations provide database integration for accounting, management of resource limits and workload prioritization.

Features

Slurm features include:[ citation needed ]

The following features are announced for version 14.11 of Slurm, was released in November 2014: [5]

Supported platforms

Slurm is primarily developed to work alongside Linux distributions, although there is also support for a few other POSIX-based operating systems, including BSDs (FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD). [6] Slurm also supports several unique computer architectures, including:

License

Slurm is available under the GNU General Public License v2.

Commercial support

In 2010, the developers of Slurm founded SchedMD, which maintains the canonical source, provides development, level 3 commercial support and training services. Commercial support is also available from Bull, Cray, and Science + Computing (subsidiary of Atos).

Usage

Slurm distinguishes several stages for a job EstadosTrabajosSLURM.jpg
Slurm distinguishes several stages for a job

The `slurm` system has three main parts:

The clients can issue commands to the control daemon, which would accept and divide the workload to the computing daemons.

For clients, the main commands are `srun` (queue up an interactive job), `sbatch` (queue up a job), `squeue` (print the job queue), `scancel` (remove a job from the queue).

Jobs can be run in batch mode or interactive mode. For interactive mode, a compute node would start a shell, connects the client into it, and run the job. From there the user may observe and interact with the job while it is running. Usually, interactive jobs are used for initial debugging, and after debugging, the same job would be submitted by `sbatch`. For a batch mode job, its `stdout` and `stderr` outputs are typically directed to text files for later inspection.

See also

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References

  1. "Running a Job on HPC using Slurm | HPC | USC". hpcc.usc.edu. Archived from the original on 2019-03-06. Retrieved 2019-03-05.
  2. Pascual, Jose Antonio; Navaridas, Javier; Miguel-Alonso, Jose (2009). Effects of Topology-Aware Allocation Policies on Scheduling Performance. Job Scheduling Strategies for Parallel Processing. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Vol. 5798. pp. 138–144. doi:10.1007/978-3-642-04633-9_8. ISBN   978-3-642-04632-2.
  3. "Slurm Commercial Support, Development, and Installation". SchedMD. Retrieved 2014-02-23.
  4. "SLURM: Simple Linux Utility for Resource Management" (PDF). 23 June 2003. Retrieved 11 January 2016.
  5. "Slurm - What's New". SchedMD. Retrieved 2014-08-29.
  6. Slurm Platforms

Further reading