Slurm

This project sets up an auto-scaling Slurm cluster Slurm is a highly configurable open source workload manager. See the Slurm project site for an overview.

Slurm Clusters in CycleCloud versions >= 7.8

Slurm clusters running in CycleCloud versions 7.8 and later implement an updated version of the autoscaling APIs that allows the clusters to utilize multiple nodearrays and partitions. To facilitate this functionality in Slurm, CycleCloud pre-populates the execute nodes in the cluster. Because of this, you need to run a command on the Slurm scheduler node after making any changes to the cluster, such as autoscale limits or VM types.

Making Cluster Changes

The Slurm cluster deployed in CycleCloud contains a script that facilitates this. After making any changes to the cluster, run the following command as root on the Slurm scheduler node to rebuild the slurm.conf and update the nodes in the cluster:

      $ sudo -i
      # cd /opt/cycle/slurm
      # ./cyclecloud_slurm.sh scale

Removing all execute nodes

As all the Slurm compute nodes have to be pre-created, it's required that all nodes in a cluster be completely removed when making big changes (such as VM type or Image). It is possible to remove all nodes via the UI, but the cyclecloud_slurm.sh script has a remove_nodes option that will remove any nodes that aren't currently running jobs.

Creating additional partitions

The default template that ships with Azure CycleCloud has two partitions (hpc and htc), and you can define custom nodearrays that map directly to Slurm partitions. For example, to create a GPU partition, add the following section to your cluster template:

   [[nodearray gpu]]
   MachineType = $GPUMachineType
   ImageName = $GPUImageName
   MaxCoreCount = $MaxGPUExecuteCoreCount
   Interruptible = $GPUUseLowPrio
   AdditionalClusterInitSpecs = $ExecuteClusterInitSpecs

      [[[configuration]]]
      slurm.autoscale = true
      # Set to true if nodes are used for tightly-coupled multi-node jobs
      slurm.hpc = false

      [[[cluster-init cyclecloud/slurm:execute:2.0.1]]]
      [[[network-interface eth0]]]
      AssociatePublicIpAddress = $ExecuteNodesPublic

Troubleshooting

UID conflicts for Slurm and Munge users

By default, this project uses a UID and GID of 11100 for the Slurm user and 11101 for the Munge user. If this causes a conflict with another user or group, these defaults may be overridden.

To override the UID and GID, click the edit button for both the scheduler node:

And for each nodearray, for example the htc array:

and add the following attributes at the end of the Configuration section:

Contributing

This project welcomes contributions and suggestions. Most contributions require you to agree to a Contributor License Agreement (CLA) declaring that you have the right to, and actually do, grant us the rights to use your contribution. For details, visit https://cla.microsoft.com.

When you submit a pull request, a CLA-bot will automatically determine whether you need to provide a CLA and decorate the PR appropriately (e.g., label, comment). Simply follow the instructions provided by the bot. You will only need to do this once across all repos using our CLA.

This project has adopted the Microsoft Open Source Code of Conduct. For more information see the Code of Conduct FAQ or contact [email protected] with any additional questions or comments.