# Overview

The Simple Linux Utility for Resource Management (SLURM) is an open source, fault-tolerant, and highly scalable cluster management and job scheduling system for large and small Linux clusters. SLURM requires no kernel modifications for its operation and is relatively self-contained. As a cluster resource manager, SLURM has three key functions. First, it allocates exclusive and/or non-exclusive access to resources (compute nodes) to users for some duration of time so they can perform work. Second, it provides a framework for starting, executing, and monitoring work (normally a parallel job) on the set of allocated nodes. Finally, it arbitrates conflicting requests for resources by managing a queue of pending work.

SLURM has been developed through the collaborative efforts of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), Hewlett-Packard, Linux NetworX, and PathScale. Linux NetworX distributes SLURM as a component in their ClusterWorX software. HP distributes and supports SLURM as a component in their XC System Software.

## Architecture

SLURM has a centralized manager, slurmctld, to monitor resources and work. There may also be a backup manager to assume those responsibilities in the event of failure. Each compute server (node) has a slurmd daemon, which can be compared to a remote shell: it waits for work, executes that work, returns status, and waits for more work. User tools include srun to initiate jobs, scancel to terminate queued or running jobs, sinfo to report system status, and squeue to report the status of jobs. The smap command graphically reports system and job status including network topology. There is also an administrative tool scontrol available to monitor and/or modify configuration and state information. APIs are available for all functions.

Figure 1. SLURM components

SLURM has a general-purpose plugin mechanism available to easily support various infrastructures. This permits a wide variety of SLURM configurations using a building block approach. These plugins presently include:

- Authentication of communications: authd, munge, or none (default).
- Checkpoint: AIX or none.
- Job accounting: log or none
- Job completion logging: text file, arbitrary script, or none (default).
- MPI: LAM, MPICH-GM, MVAPICH, and none (default, for most other versions of MPI.
- Node selection: Blue Gene (a 3-D torus interconnect), consumable resources (to allocate individual processors and memory) or linear (to dedicate entire nodes).
- Process tracking (for signaling): AIX, linux process tree hierarchy, process group ID, and RMS (Quadrics Linux kernel patch).
- Scheduler: The Maui Scheduler, backfill, or FIFO (default).
- Switch or interconnect: Quadrics (Elan3 or Elan4), Federation Federation (IBM High Performance Switch), or none (actually means nothing requiring special handling, such as Ethernet or Myrinet, default).

The entities managed by these SLURM daemons, shown in Figure 2, include nodes, the compute resource in SLURM, partitions, which group nodes into logical sets, jobs, or allocations of resources assigned to a user for a specified amount of time, and job steps, which are sets of (possibly parallel) tasks within a job. The partitions can be considered job queues, each of which has an assortment of constraints such as job size limit, job time limit, users permitted to use it, etc. Priority-ordered jobs are allocated nodes within a partition until the resources (nodes, processors, memory, etc.) within that partition are exhausted. Once a job is assigned a set of nodes, the user is able to initiate parallel work in the form of job steps in any configuration within the allocation. For instance, a single job step may be started that utilizes all nodes allocated to the job, or several job steps may independently use a portion of the allocation.

Figure 2. SLURM entities

## Configurability

Node state monitored include: count of processors, size of real memory, size of temporary disk space, and state (UP, DOWN, etc.). Additional node information includes weight (preference in being allocated work) and features (arbitrary information such as processor speed or type). Nodes are grouped into disjoint partitions. Partition information includes: name, list of associated nodes, state (UP or DOWN), maximum job time limit, maximum node count per job, group access list, and shared node access (YES, NO or FORCE). Bit maps are used to represent nodes and scheduling decisions can be made by performing a small number of comparisons and a series of fast bit map manipulations. A sample (partial) SLURM configuration file follows.

    #
    # Sample /etc/slurm.conf
    #
    ControlMachine=linux0001
    BackupController=linux0002
    #
    AuthType=auth/munge
    Epilog=/usr/local/slurm/sbin/epilog
    HeartbeatInterval=60
    PluginDir=/usr/local/slurm/lib
    Prolog=/usr/local/slurm/sbin/prolog
    SlurmctldPort=7002
    SlurmctldTimeout=120
    SlurmdPort=7003
    SlurmdSpoolDir=/var/tmp/slurmd.spool
    SlurmdTimeout=120
    StateSaveLocation=/usr/local/slurm/slurm.state
    SwitchType=switch/elan
    TmpFS=/tmp
    #
    # Node Configurations
    #
    NodeName=DEFAULT TmpDisk=16384 State=IDLE
    NodeName=lx[0001-0002] State=DRAINED
    NodeName=lx[0003-8000] Procs=16 RealMemory=2048 Weight=16
    NodeName=lx[8001-9999] Procs=32 RealMemory=4096 Weight=40 Feature=1200MHz
    #
    # Partition Configurations
    #
    PartitionName=DEFAULT MaxTime=30 MaxNodes=2
    PartitionName=login Nodes=lx[0001-0002] State=DOWN
    PartitionName=debug Nodes=lx[0003-0030] State=UP    Default=YES
    PartitionName=class Nodes=lx[0031-0040] AllowGroups=students
    PartitionName=batch Nodes=lx[0041-9999] MaxTime=UNLIMITED MaxNodes=4096

Last modified 7 December 2005