Slurm Migration

Overview

Slurm, which stands for Simple Linux Utility for Resource Management, is a widely used open-source HPC resource management and scheduling system that originated at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

It is decided that OSC will be implementing Slurm for job scheduling and resource management, to replace the Torque resource manager and Moab scheduling system that it currently uses, over the course of 2020.

Phases of Slurm Migration

It is expected that on Jan 1, 2021, both Pitzer and Owens clusters will be using Slurm. OSC will be switching to Slurm on Pitzer with the deployment of the new Pitzer hardware in September 2020. Owens migration to Slurm will occur later this fall.

PBS Compatibility Layer

During Slurm migration, OSC enables PBS compatibility layer provided by Slurm in order to make the transition as smooth as possible. Therefore, PBS batch scripts that used to work in the previous Torque/Moab environment mostly still work in Slurm. However, we encourage you to start to convert your PBS batch scripts to Slurm scripts because

  • PBS compatibility layer usually handles basic cases, and may not be able to handle some complicated cases 
  • Slurm has many features that are not available in Moab/Torque, and the layer will not provide access to those features
  • OSC may turn off the PBS compatibility layer in the future

Please check the following pages on how to submit a Slurm job:

Further Reading

Supercomputer: 
Owens
Pitzer
Service: 
HPC