Associations & Quality of Service (QOS)

Associations

Oscar uses associations to control job submissions from users. An association refers to a combination of four factors: Cluster, Account, User, and Partition. For a user to submit jobs to a partition, an association for the user and partition is required in Oscar.

To view a table of association data for a specific user (thegrouch in the example), enter the following command in Oscar:

(sacctmgr list assoc | head -2; sacctmgr list assoc | grep thegrouch) | cat

If thegrouch has an exploratory account, you should see an output similar to this:

   Cluster    Account       User  Partition     Share GrpJobs       GrpTRES GrpSubmit     GrpWall   GrpTRESMins MaxJobs       MaxTRES MaxTRESPerNode MaxSubmit     MaxWall   MaxTRESMins                  QOS   Def QOS GrpTRESRunMin
---------- ---------- ---------- ---------- --------- ------- ------------- --------- ----------- ------------- ------- ------------- -------------- --------- ----------- ------------- -------------------- --------- -------------
     oscar    default  thegrouch  gpu-debug         1                                                                                                                                               gpu-debug gpu-debug
     oscar    default  thegrouch     bigmem         1                                                                                                                                             norm-bigmem norm-big+
     oscar    default  thegrouch        smp         1                                                                                                                                                norm-smp  norm-smp
     oscar    default  thegrouch        gpu         1                                                                                                                                                norm-gpu  norm-gpu cpu=34560,gr+
     oscar    default  thegrouch      batch         1                                                                                                                                                  normal    normal    cpu=110000
     oscar    default  thegrouch        vnc         1                                                                                                                                                     vnc       vnc
     oscar    default  thegrouch      debug         1                                                                                                                                                   debug     debug

Note that the first four columns correspond to the four factors that form an association. Each row of the table corresponds to a unique association (i.e., a unique combination of Cluster, Account, User, and Partition values). Each association is assigned a Quality of Service (see QOS section below for more details).

Some associations have a value for GrpTRESRunMins. This value indicates a limit on the total number of Trackable RESource (TRES) minutes that can be used by jobs running with this association at any given time. The cpu=110000 for the association with the batch partition indicates that all of the jobs running with this association can have at most an accumulated 110,000 core-minute cost. If this limit is reached, new jobs will be delayed until other jobs have completed and freed up resources.

Example of GrpTRESRunMins Limit

Here is an example file that incurs a significant core-minute cost:

#!/bin/bash
#SBATCH -n 30
#SBATCH --mem=32G
#SBATCH -t 90:00:00

echo "Is this too much to ask? (Hint: What is the GrpTRESRunMins limit for batch?)"

If this file is named too_many_cpu_minutes.sh, a user withthegrouch's QOS might experience something like this:

$ sbatch too_many_cpu_minutes.sh
Submitted batch job 12345678
$ myq
Jobs for user thegrouch

Running:
(none)

Pending:
ID        NAME                     PART.  QOS     CPU  WALLTIME    EST.START  REASON
15726799  too_many_cpu_minutes.sh  batch  normal  30   3-18:00:00  N/A        (AssocGrpCPURunMinutesLimit)

The REASON field will be (None) at first, but after a minute or so, it should resemble the output above (after another myq command).

Note that the REASON the job is pending and not yet running is AssocGrpCPURunMinutesLimit. This is because the program requests 30 cores for 90 hours, which is more than the oscar/default/thegrouch/batch association allows (30 cores * 90 hours * 60 minutes/hour = 162,000 core-minutes > 110,000 core-minutes). In fact, this job could be pending indefinitely, so it would be a good idea for thegrouch to run scancel 12345678 and make a less demanding job request (or use an association that allows for that amount of resources).

Account Quality of Service (QoS) and Resources

Quality of Service (QoS) refers to the ability of a system to prioritize and manage network resources to ensure a certain level of performance or service quality. An association's QOS is used for job scheduling when a user requests that a job be run. Every QOS is linked to a set of job limits that reflect the limits of the cluster/account/user/partition of the association(s) that has/have that QOS. QOS's can also have information on GrpTRESRunMins limits for their corresponding associations. For example, HPC Priority accounts have job limits of 1,198,080 core-minutes per job, which are associated with those accounts' QOS's. Whenever a job request is made (necessarily through a specific association), the job will only be queued if it meets the requirements of the association's QOS. In some cases, a QOS can be defined to have limits that differ from its corresponding association. In such cases, the limits of the QOS override the limits of the corresponding association. For more information, see the slurm QOS documentation.

myaccount - To list the QoS & Resources

The myaccount command serves as a comprehensive tool for users to assess the resources associated with their accounts. By utilizing this command, individuals can gain insights into critical parameters such as Max Resources Per User and Max Jobs Submit Per User.

[ccvdemo1@login010 ~]$ myaccount
My QoS                    Total Resources in this QoS              Max Resources Per User                   Max Jobs Submit Per User
------------------------- ------------------------------           ------------------------------           -----------         
debug                                                                                                       1200                
gpu-debug                                                          cpu=8,gres/gpu=4,mem=96G                 1200                
gpu                                                                node=1                                   1200                
normal                                                             cpu=32,mem=246G                          1000                
norm-bigmem                                                        cpu=32,gres/gpu=0,mem=770100M,node=2     1200                
norm-gpu                                                           cpu=12,gres/gpu=2,mem=192G               1200                
vnc                                                                                                         1