Requirements for CLC Grid Integration

Supported grid scheduling systems

Grid scheduling systems to be used to execute jobs submitted by a CLC Server must have:

Grid integration has been verified using the following third party scheduling systems:

Notes about DRMAA for each of the grid scheduling systems are provided in the appendix, including information relating to compilation, where relevant.

Limiting CLC grid job number to the number of CLC Grid Worker licenses

The grid scheduling system must be configured to limit the number of CLC jobs simultaneously running on the grid nodes to the number of CLC Grid Worker licenses. Where more CLC jobs than this are launched, excess tasks should be held in the queue until a license becomes available.

For SLURM, the number of CLC Grid Worker licenses can be configured as described on https://slurm.schedmd.com/licenses.html. For LSF and UNIVA, a "Consumable Resource" would be configured, as described in Configuring licenses as a consumable resource. Relevant information about configuring consumable resources for PBS Pro can be found in the adminstrator's guide for that scheduling software.

TORQUE from Adaptive Computing is an example of a system that works for submitting CLC jobs, but that cannot be supported because it does not provide a means of limiting the number of CLC jobs sent simultaneously to the cluster to match the number of CLC Grid Worker licenses. So, with TORQUE, if you had three Grid Worker licenses, up to three jobs could be run simultaneously. However, if three jobs are already running and you launch a fourth job, then this fourth job will fail because there would be no license available for it. This limitation can be overcome, allowing you to work with systems such as TORQUE, if you control the job submission in some other way so the license number is not exceeded. One possible setup for this is if you have a one-node-runs-one-job setup. You could then set up a queue where jobs are only sent to a certain number of nodes, where that number matches the number of CLC Grid Worker licenses you have.