Configuring Open OnDemand interactive applications

Configuring Open OnDemand interactive applications#

Within Open OnDemand, interactive applications contain different configuration options. These options vary by application and for a select number of applications one can select “Configuration type”. This field allows one to specify either “Preset configuration” or “Custom configuration”. The “Preset configuration” option provides the “Preset configuration” field, which provides a select number of options for resources and automatically sets important Slurm directives for you. Although “Preset configurations” work for most users, some users may want to have finer control of the resources they would like to run on. This can be accomplished by selecting “Custom configuration” in the “Configuration type” field. For more information on these custom configurations, consult the section Custom configuration options below.

../_images/preset_custom_configs.png

Important

All applications that have a “Configuration type” option and start a job using the “Preset configuration” field are automatically submitted to the ahub partition. This partition provides quick access to resources with limitations (see partitions on Alpine). One major stipulation of these resources is that only 1 job can run on ahub at a time.

Custom configuration options#

Custom configuration options can be extremely useful, if you would like to request resources that are not available through the “Preset configuration” option. Using this option one can gain access to unconventional resources such as the following.

  • GPU nodes

  • High-memory nodes

  • A large numbers of cores

  • Longer job durations

Unfortunately, specifying these options can be overwhelming! To help users make sense of these options, we have constructed the table below, which describes each field.

Input

Description

Cluster

The HPC cluster you would like to run on. Possible options are Alpine and Blanca.

Account

The account you would like to use. If you do not have a project allocation, then CU Boulder users specify ucb-general; CSU users specify csu-general; RMACC users specify rmacc-general; and AMC users provide amc-general. If you have a project allocation you can use this allocation e.g. ucbXXX_asc1. Blanca users should use their blanca-<groupname> partition name.

Partition

Specifies a particular node type to use. For example, you can provide ahub for quicker access or utilize another partition on Alpine. Blanca users should use their blanca-<groupname> partition.

QoS Name

Quality of Service (QoS) constrains or modifies certain job characteristics. On most Alpine partitions you can specify normal for jobs of up to 24 hours and long for jobs of up to 7 days in duration. For more information see Alpine QoS. Blanca users should specify their blanca-<groupname> partition name for QoS.

Time

The duration of the job, in hours. This is dependent on both the partition and the QoS on Alpine (see above). On Blanca, users may specify jobs of up to 7 days (168 hours) in duration.

Number of cores

The number of physical CPU cores for the job. Interactive job applications may use up to 16 cores, if using the ahub partition. All jobs are limited to a single compute node.

Reservation

A reservation reserves resources for jobs being executed by select users and/or accounts. Reservations are rare on our system, but can sometimes be granted for courses utilizing HPC resources or the testing of specialty hardware.

gres options

General resources (gres) allows for fine-grain hardware specifications. This option is often used to request GPUs. For more information on gres, see General Resources (gres).

Warning

Jobs scheduled on partitions other than ahub may take up to several hours to start depending on the hardware and duration selected.