[HTCondor-users] Scheduling interactive and Batch use of GPUs

[chris.brew@xxxxxxxxxx]

Hi,

Weâve just been given some money to buy a nice shiny GPU test box.

I would like to make the resources available to local users for interactive use (itâs a test box after all) but also for local and grid batch use (we want to test this too).

I know condor can manage the scheduling of the GPUs with the âuse feature : GPUsâ knob, I was wondering about how best to integrate the local interactive users.

My initial thought is to get local users to submit interactive jobs, that should be fine as long as the resources are not too heavily loaded, but if (whwn) the system gets more loaded we may end up with some dead time if the interactive job does not get scheduled until the middle of the night or over the weekend.

Now maybe thatâs the sign to ask for more money to expand the resource but in lieu of that I was looking at either âJob Deferralâ or âComputing on Demandâ.

If a user submitted a deferred job on Friday evening, would the job block the resource over the weekend or would it not attempt to match until itâs deferral time came up? And I assume I can use whether the job is interactive in the startd rank expression to heavily prioritise the interactive jobs.

Or would the âComputing on Demandâ feature work with GPUs? Is it even possible to suspend a GPU job and use the GPU for another job?

Is there another way to achieve this that I havenât thought of?

Many Thanks,
Chris.

--
Dr Chris Brew
Scientific Computing Manager
Particle Physics Department
STFC - Rutherford Appleton Laboratory
Harwell Oxford,
Didcot
OX11 0QX
+44 1235 446326