Allocation

Resource Allocations on the Frontenac Cluster

This Wiki entry is meant to explain how resources are shared on the CAC Frontenac cluster. This includes default allocations in terms of Compute time as well as extended resources that were allocated by Compute Canada or that come from contributed systems. We also point out differences between the current Frontenac allocation scheme and the older scheme that was used on the now decommissioned SW/CAC clusters.

Fair share vs core/job restrictions

Our job scheduler on Frontenac is [SLURM https://slurm.schedmd.com/]. All resource allocations and limitations are applied through this scheduler. For a basic intro on how to use it, please see our scheduler help file.

Every user on our systems has at least one SLURM account, the default account. Users with access to extended resources have additional accounts corresponding to these allocations. These SLURM accounts have intrinsic restrictions and allow scheduling of jobs up to these limits.

Comparison: Allocation on SW/CAC (SGE) vs Frontenac (SLURM)

Allocation Feature	SW/CAC (SGE)	Frontenac (SLURM)
Default allocation	48 core limit	50 core years over 1 year
December 1, 2017	User notification by email All users receive access to new systems	Frontenac ("new system")
January 3, 2017	Data synchronization stops User data that differ after this date must be transferred by users Grid Engine scheduling disabled (nodes "draining")	SW ("old system")
January 19, 2018	All running jobs are terminated Remaining hardware is transferred to new system	SW ("old system")
January 26, 2018	User access to sflogin0/swlogin1 closed SNOlab (SX) cluster jobs terminated SNOlab (SX) login nodes closed	SW ("old system")