Data Storage and Compute infrastructure

QUT eResearch data storage and computing infrastructure leverage both on-prem and hybrid cloud resources. QUT hosts a local High-Performance Computing (HPC) facility comprised of 254 compute nodes, with a total of 7,256 conventional CPU cores (14,512 virtual cores with hyperthreading) and 74 GPUs. The highest memory allocation is 6 TB. Additionally, the HPC file storage for data analytics has an 1800TB disk capacity.

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Introduction

All jobs on the HPC must be scheduled via the PBS Pro job submission system. Jobs are submitted to PBS Pro scheduler specifying required resources, for example, the number of CPUs, amount of memory, and estimated time to complete the job (walltime). PBS will then schedule the job to run on the cluster when requested resources are/become available. Existing HPC usage principles are in place to ensure fair access by all users.

Basic PBS commands

Find below information on basic PBS commands:

Command	Description
qsub -I -S /bin/bash	Submit an interactive job for 1 node with 1 CPU and 1Gb of memory for 1 hr
qsub commandfile	Submit batch jobs to the HPC cluster using the PBS ‘qsub’ command. For example: [username@hpc ~]$ qsub commandfile where commadfile is a file containing PBS commands along with other user defined executable command(s). See qsub Options below for more options.
qstat –u username	Displays a summary of the status of PBS jobs and queues for the users username. See man qstat for details of options
qjobs	Displays a summary of the jobs that you have submitted
qdel jobid	Delete your job from a queue. The jobid is returned by qsub at job submission time, and is also displayed in the qstat output.
qhold jobid	Place a hold on your job in the queue and stops it from running.
qrls –h u jobid	Release a user hold on your job and allows it to be run.
qrerun jobid	Terminate an executing job and return it to a queue.

qsub Options

There are two methods of specifying qsub options: 1) Within a PBS launchfile, and 2) On the qsub command-line.

Below is a simply example showing both methods.

qsub launchfile.pbs

Where launchfile contains:

#!/bin/bash -l #
#PBS -N MuJobName
#PBS -l select=1:ncpus=2:mem=4gb
#PBS -l walltime=24:00:00

# Specify the executable commands:
executable_script.py input.data > output.data

Below are some commonly used qsub options:

sub option	Description

sub option	Description
#PBS -N myJob	Assigns a job name. The default is the name of PBS jobscript.
#PBS -l select=1:ncpus=2	The number of chunks/nodes (n=1) and processors per chunk/node (n=2).
#PBS -l ngpus=2	The number of graphical processing units (GPUs) required.
#PBS -l walltime=01:00:00	Sets the maximum wall-clock time during which this job can run (walltime=hh:mm:ss).
#PBS -l mem=n{mb\|gb}	Sets the maximum amount of memory per chunk/node allocated to the job.
#PBS -q queuename	Assigns your job to a specific queue.
#PBS -o mypath/my.out	The path and file name for standard output.
#PBS -e mypath/my.err	The path and file name for standard error.
#PBS -j oe	Join option that merges the standard error stream with the standard output stream of the job.
#PBS -m {a\|b\|e}	Causes email to be sent to the users email address (as default) when: a - the job aborts b - the job begins e - the job ends
#PBS -M email-address	Sends email notifications to a specific email address (i.e. need to specify if other than the users email address).
#PBS –P project	Specifies what project the job belongs to.
#PBS -r n	Indicates that a job should not rerun if it fails.
#PBS -S shell	Sets the shell to use. Make sure the full path to the shell is correct.
#PBS -V	Exports all environment variables to the job.
#PBS -W	Used to set job dependencies between two or more jobs.

A Job Script Example

An example PBS Pro submission script is provided below:

#!/bin/bash -l
#PBS -N Example_Job 
#PBS -l select=2:ncpus=16:mem=4gb 
#PBS -l walltime=<hh:mm:ss> 
#PBS -o <output-file>
#PBS -e <error-file>

cd $PBS_O_WORKDIR

module load java
conda activate ConsGenome

matlab –nodisplay –nosplash –r example_job.m

Where the line "-l select=2:ncpus=16 " is the number of processors required for the job. select specifies the number of nodes (or chunks of resource) required; ncpus indicates the number of CPUs per chunk/node required.

Find below a table illustrating how the above command works:

select	ncpus	mem	Description

select	ncpus	mem	Description
2	16	4	32 Processor job with 8GB memory, using 2 nodes with 16 processors and 4GB memory per node
4	8	2	32 Processor job with 8GB memory, using 4 nodes with 8 processors and 2GB memory per node
16	1	1	16 Processor job with 16GB memory, using 16 nodes with 1 processor and 1GB per node
8	16	32	128 Processor job with 256GB memory, using 8 nodes with 16 processors and 32GB per node

The line "-l walltime=<hh:mm:ss>" is the time limit you set for the job. If your job exceeds this time the scheduler will terminate the job. It is recommended to find a usual runtime for a job of the same size and add some more (say 20%) to it.

For example, if a job normally takes approximately 10 hours, the wall time limit for a similar job could be set to 12 hours, e.g. "-l walltime=12:00:00".

By setting a wall time, the scheduler can perform job scheduling more efficiently and also reduces occasions where errors can leave the job stalled but still taking up resources for the default (much longer) wall time limit.

To find out what the default queue wall times are run the "qstat -q" command.

Job management

The qstat command displays the status of the PBS scheduler and queues. Using the flags -Qa shows the queue partitions available.

If no queue is defined, the PBS scheduler will assign the job to a queue based on the resources requested. The following table shows the commonly used queues:

quick	short	long	long	huge

quick	short	long	long	huge
all nodes available low priority 4 hours of run time available	all nodes available standard priority 24 hours of run time available	all nodes available standard priority 168 hours of run time available	all nodes available standard priority 168 hours of run time available	all nodes available standard priority 168 hours of run time available

PBS Job States

The table below describes the different job states through the life cycle of a job.

Job State	Description
B	Job arrays only: job array has Begun.
E	Job is Exiting after having run.
F	Job has Finished exiting and execution. The job was completed successfully and had no application errors.
F	Job has Finished exiting and execution; however, the job experienced application errors.
H	Job is Held. A job is put into a held state by the server or by a user or administrator. A job stays in a held state until it is released by an eResearch administrator.
Q	Job is Queued, eligible and waiting to be run.
R	Job is Running.
S	Job is Suspended by server. A job is put into the suspended state when a higher priority job needs the resources.
T	Job is in Transition (being moved to a new location).
U	Job is User-suspended.
W	Job is Waiting for its requested execution time to be reached or job specified a staging request which failed for some reason.
X	Sub jobs only; sub job is finished (expired).

Queue Limits

	quick	short	medium	long	huge
Priority	161	20	160	160	160
Max CPU per job	500	200	100	40	40
Max Node	29	29	29	29	29
Min Walltime (hr)	1	8	24	72	72
Max Walltime (hr)	8	24	72	168	168
Default Walltime (hr)	1	24	24	72	72
Default Memory (gb)	2	2	2	2	2
Max RunningJobs	500	5000	400	200	200
Max QueuedJobs	20000	5000	5000	2000	2000

Queue Scheduling Issues

The scheduling algorithm used on the HPC aims to:

promote large-scale parallel use of the HPC
allow equal access to resources for all users
provide good turnaround for all users
minimize the impact of jobs on one another

Some of the scheduler features to achieve these aims are:

resources are strictly allocated so jobs will not start unless there is sufficient free resources (e.g. cpus and memory).
queued jobs are shuffled so that jobs from different users are "interleaved". This means your first job should appear near the top of the queue even if there are many jobs in the queue.

From a user's perspective, it is very important that you minimize your requests for resources (e.g. walltime, memory and cpus). Otherwise, your job may be queued or suspended longer than necessary. Of course, make sure you ask for sufficient resources - a little experimentation might help.

PBS Variables

PBS sets multiple environment variables at submission time. The following PBS variables are commonly used in command files:

Variable Name	Description
PBS_ARRAYID	Array ID numbers for jobs submitted with the -t flag. For example a job submitted with #PBS -t 1-8 will run eight identical copies of the shell script. The value of the PBS_ARRAYID will be an integer between 1 and 8.
PBS_ENVIRONMENT	Set to PBS_BATCH to indicate that the job is a batch job; otherwise, set to PBS_INTERACTIVE to indicate that the job is a PBS interactive job.
PBS_JOBID	Full jobid assigned to this job. Often used to uniquely name output files for this job, for example: mpirun - np 16 ./a.out >output.${PBS_JOBID}
PBS_JOBNAME	Name of the job. This can be set using the -N option in the PBS script (or from the command line). The default job name is the name of the PBS script.
PBS_NODEFILE	Contains a list of the nodes assigned to the job. If multiple CPUs on a node have been assigned, the node will be listed in the file more than once. By default, mpirun assigns jobs to nodes in the order they are listed in this file
PBS_O_HOME	The value of the HOME variable in the environment in which qsub was executed.
PBS_O_HOST	The name of the host upon which the qsub command is running.
PBS_O_PATH	Original PBS path. Used with pbsdsh.
PBS_O_QUEUE	Queue job was submitted to.
PBS_O_WORKDIR	PBS sets the environment variable PBS_O_WORKDIR to the directory from which the batch job was submitted.
PBS_QUEUE	Queue job is running in (typically this is the same as PBS_O_QUEUE).

Interactive PBS Jobs

The use of PBS is not limited to batch jobs only. It also allows users to use the compute nodes interactively, when needed.

For example, users can work with the developer environments provided by Matlab or R on compute nodes, and run their jobs (until the wall-time expires).

Instead of preparing a submission script, users pass the job requirements directly to the qsub command. For instance, the following PBS script:

corresponds to the following interactive job command:

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