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Enabling and Configuring Resource Pools

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Starting with HPC Pack 2008 R2 with Service Pack 2 (SP2), you can configure the HPC Job Scheduler Service to allocate resources based on Resource Pools. Resource Pools help you define what proportion of your cluster cores must be guaranteed for specific user groups (or job types). If a user group is not using all of their guaranteed cores, those cores can be used by other groups. You must use job templates to associate a user group with a Resource Pool. Jobs that use the job template will collectively be guaranteed the proportion of cluster cores that are defined for the Resource Pool, and will be scheduled within the pool according to job priority, submit time, and scheduling mode (Queued or Balanced). Resource Pool scheduling works best on clusters with homogeneous resources.

Sample scenario: Various user groups in your organization have contributed to the cluster budget, and in return they expect to have a determined portion of the cluster at their disposal. If at any given time a group has a light workload and does not utilize their entire share of the cluster, you want those resources temporarily made available to other groups. So to guarantee availability and maximize cluster utilization, you want the HPC Job Scheduler Service to allocate resources based on Resource Pools.

In this topic:

Understanding resource pool properties

Resource pools have the following properties:

Property Definition
Weight Set by cluster administrator.

An integer between 0 and 999,999 that represents the proportion of cluster cores that should be guaranteed to the pool.
Guaranteed cores Set by the HPC Job Scheduler Service.

The number of cores that correspond to the weight defined for the pool. The number of guaranteed cores will vary according to how many nodes are Online and reachable at any given time. The number of guaranteed cores is calculated as (poolWeight/totalWeights)*NumberOfCoresOnline.
Allocated cores Set by the HPC Job Scheduler Service.

The number of cores that are actually being used by jobs that are submitted to the pool. This number can be higher or lower than the number of guaranteed cores.

Important considerations

  • A pool with a weight of 0 has no guaranteed cores, but can have allocated cores if there are jobs that are submitted to the pool, and the other pools are not using all of their resources.

  • The Default Pool cannot be deleted. When Resource Pools are enabled in the HPC Job Scheduler Service, any jobs that do not specify a pool will use the Default Pool. Unlike custom pools, specifying the Default Pool does not provide any guarantee of resources. You can set the weight of the Default Pool to 0.

  • When the HPC Job Scheduler Service calculates the number of cores for each Resource Pool (according to pool weight), the resulting value for each pool is rounded down to the nearest whole number. The remainder cores are added to the Default Pool.

  • Node groups and a list of requested nodes provide alternative ways to allocate cluster resources to a job, and neither is intended to be used together with Resource Pools. If you add both specific node groups (or a list of requested nodes) and Resource Pools to a job template, the HPC Job Scheduler Service will restrict access to cluster resources based on both properties independently.

Configure resource pools

To configure resource pools, you must define one or more pools, and then associate the pools with job templates. As an example, let’s say you have two user groups, and each group expects to be able to use the following proportions of the cluster at any given time: Group A 60%, and Group B 40%. Let’s also say that Group A has two distinct types of jobs for which they want separate job templates: one type is high priority, and the other type is low priority. To enforce the desired scheduling policies, you create three node templates: “GroupA_HighPriJobs”, “GroupA_LowPriJobs”, and “GroupB_AllJobs”.

Important

After you define Resource Pools and associate them with Job Templates, you must enable Resource Pool scheduling in the Job Scheduler settings. See Enable resource pools in this topic.

To define Resource Pools

  1. In HPC Cluster Manager, click Configuration.

  2. In the Navigation Pane, click Resource Pools.

  3. In Actions, click Edit Pools and Weights. The dialog box appears.

  4. In the dialog box, click Add two times. Two new rows appear in the list of pools.

  5. In the Pool Name column, rename the pools PoolA and PoolB.

  6. In the Weight column, type the desired weights for each group (60, 40).

  7. Set the weight for the Default pool to 0.

  8. Click OK to save and close the dialog box.

To associate Resource Pools with Job Templates

  1. In the Navigation Pane, click Job Templates.

  2. In Actions, click New to open the Job Template wizard and then define the template as follows:

    • Name: GroupA_HighPriJobs

    • Maximum priority: Highest

    • Default priority: Highest

  3. Open the job template “GroupA_HighPriJobs” in the Job Template Editor and define the Pool and the user permissions as follows:

    • Add the Pool property to the template, and for the Valid Value, select “PoolA”.

    • Click Permissions, and ensure that only users in Group A have permission to submit jobs with that template.

    • Save the changes.

  4. Create a job template for “GroupA_LowPriJobs” as follows:

    • In the Job Template list, right-click “GroupA_HighPriJobs” and then click Copy.

    • Right-click the copy, click Edit, and then define the template as follows:

    • Name: GroupA_LowPriJobs

    • Maximum priority: Normal

    • Default priority: BelowNormal

    • Because this template is based on the “GroupA_HighPriJobs”, the permissions and Pool are already set correctly.

  5. Create a new job template for “GroupB_AllJobs” with the following properties:

    • Name: GroupB_AllJobs

    • Maximum priority: Highest

    • Default priority: Normal

    • Add the Pool property to the template, and for the Valid Value, select “PoolB”.

    • Click Permissions, and ensure that only users in Group B have permission to submit jobs with that template.

Now you are ready to enable Resource Pool scheduling through the Job Scheduler settings.

Enable resource pools

You must enable Resource Pool scheduling in the Job Scheduler configuration settings. You can do this through HPC Cluster Manager, or by using command utilities. Use one of the following methods to enable Resource Pool scheduling:

  • HPC Cluster Manager

    1. In HPC Cluster Manager, click Options, and then click Job Scheduler Configuration.

    2. Select the Resource Pools tab.

    3. Select the Enable Resource Pools check box.

    4. Click OK.

  • Command prompt window (run as Administrator)

    Use the cluscfg setparams command, for example:

    Cluscfg setparams enablepools=true

  • HPC PowerShell (run as Administrator)

    Use the Set-HpcClusterProperty cmdlet, for example:

    Set-hpcclusterproperty -enablepools $true

See Also

Job Scheduler Configuration in Microsoft HPC Pack
Job Templates
How to Add or Remove Job Template Level Submission or Activation Filters