Load sharing facility (lsf-hpc), Standard lsf, How lsf-hpc and slurm interact – HP XC System 3.x Software User Manual
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by default for LSF-HPC batch jobs. The system administrator has the option of creating additional partitions.
For example, another partition could be created for interactive jobs.
Load Sharing Facility (LSF-HPC)
The Load Sharing Facility for High Performance Computing (LSF-HPC) from Platform Computing Corporation
is a batch system resource manager that has been integrated with SLURM for use on the HP XC system.
LSF-HPC for SLURM is included with the HP XC System Software, and is an integral part of the HP XC
environment. LSF-HPC interacts with SLURM to obtain and allocate available resources, and to launch and
control all the jobs submitted to LSF-HPC. LSF-HPC accepts, queues, schedules, dispatches, and controls all
the batch jobs that users submit, according to policies and configurations established by the HP XC site
administrator. On an HP XC system, LSF-HPC for SLURM is installed and runs on one HP XC node, known
as the LSF execution host.
A complete description of LSF-HPC is provided in
. In addition, for your convenience,
the HP XC Documentation CD contains LSF manuals from Platform Computing.
Standard LSF
Standard LSF is also available on the HP XC system. The information for using Standard LSF is documented
in the LSF manuals from Platform Computing. For your convenience, the HP XC documentation CD contains
these manuals.
How LSF-HPC and SLURM Interact
In the HP XC environment, LSF-HPC cooperates with SLURM to combine the powerful scheduling functionality
of LSF-HPC with the 's scalable parallel job launching capabilities of SLURM. LSF-HPC acts primarily as a
workload scheduler on top of the SLURM system, providing policy and topology-based scheduling for end
users. SLURM provides an execution and monitoring layer for LSF-HPC. LSF-HPC uses SLURM to detect system
topology information, make scheduling decisions, and launch jobs on allocated resources.
When a job is submitted to LSF-HPC, LSF-HPC schedules the job based on job resource requirements. LSF-HPC
communicates with SLURM to allocate the required HP XC compute nodes for the job from the SLURM lsf
partition. LSF-HPC provides node-level scheduling for parallel jobs, and core-level scheduling for serial jobs.
Because of node-level scheduling, a parallel job may be allocated more cores than it requested, depending
on its resource request; the srun or mpirun -srun launch commands within the job still honor the original
request. LSF-HPC always tries to pack multiple serial jobs on the same node, with one core per job. Parallel
jobs and serial jobs cannot coexist on the same node.
After the LSF-HPC scheduler allocates the SLURM resources for a job, the SLURM allocation information is
recorded with the job. You can view this information with the bjobs and bhist commands.
When LSF-HPC starts a job, it sets the SLURM_JOBID and SLURM_NPROCS environment variables in the
job environment. SLURM_JOBID associates the LSF-HPC job with SLURM's allocated resources. The
SLURM_NPROCS
environment variable is set to the originally requested number of cores. LSF-HPC dispatches
the job from the LSF execution host, which is the same node on which LSF-HPC daemons run. The LSF-HPC
JOB_STARTER
script, which is configured for all queues, uses the srun command to launch a user job on
the first node in the allocation. Your job can contain additional srun or mpirun commands to launch tasks
to all nodes in the allocation.
While a job is running, all LSF-HPC-supported resource limits are enforced, including core limit, CPU time
limit, data limit, file size limit, memory limit and stack limit. When you terminate a job, LSF-HPC uses the
SLURM scancel command to propagate the signal to the entire job.
After a job finishes, LSF-HPC releases all allocated resources.
A detailed description, along with an example and illustration, of how LSF-HPC and SLURM cooperate to
launch and manage jobs is provided in
"How LSF-HPC and SLURM Launch and Manage a Job"
. It is
highly recommended that you review this information.
In summary, and in general:
LSF-HPC
Determines WHEN and WHERE the job will run. LSF-HPC communicates with SLURM to determine
WHICH resources are available, and SELECTS the appropriate set of nodes for the job.
Run-Time Environment
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