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What is a Slurm Account?

A Slurm account is a resource allocation entity used to manage and organize computing resources on a Supercomputer. It differs from your user account, which identifies you as an individual on the system. Instead, Slurm accounts group users based on their affiliation, such as research groups, classes, or projects.

Key Differences between a Slurm Account and a User Account​

  1. User Account: Your individual identity on the cluster, tied to your username and credentials.
  2. Slurm Account: A resource grouping to track and manage usage, such as computing time, priorities, and fairshare policies.

You may belong to one or more Slurm accounts, depending on your affiliations.

Why You Might Belong to Multiple Slurm Accounts​

  1. Multiple Research Groups: If you conduct work for two or more research groups, each may have its own Slurm account.
  2. Class Projects: Students enrolled in academic courses with Supercomputer assignments will receive Slurm accounts specific to the class.
  3. Collaborations: Collaborators on interdisciplinary projects may gain access to multiple accounts to work across different teams.

How Slurm Accounts affect Fairshare​

Fairshare determines your job's priority relative to others and is calculated based on past resource usage within a Slurm account. If you belong to multiple Slurm accounts, your usage is tracked separately for each account.

Quality of Service (QoS)​

The Quality of Service (QoS) of your job submissions determine resources limits such as job run length, memory, and priority. For example, class accounts can only submit to the class QoS. When submitting a job, always verify the QoS associated with your chosen Slurm account.

If you have multiple slurm accounts and wish to change your default slurm account, please contact Research Computing to make this change.

Practical Example​

If you are working on both a research project and taking a class that uses the cluster:

  • Submit class-related jobs under the class-specific Slurm account.
  • Submit research-related jobs under your research group's Slurm account.
  • Each account will have separate fairshare tracking and QoS policies.

Understanding Slurm accounts ensures efficient and fair usage of cluster resources while respecting the allocations and policies of your affiliations. Always choose the appropriate account for your job to optimize your resource usage and priorities.

Managing multiple accounts​

Using mybalance, you can list all available group affiliations your account is attached to.

[rcsparky@~]$ mybalance
Account       User     RawUsage_CHE  RawFairShare  TargetFairShare  RealFairShare
grp_rcadmins  rcsparky 903.4         0.919012      0.9392988        0.9880073
grp_superlab  rcsparky 0.0           1.000000      1.0000000        1.0000000
class_598mat  rcsparky 0.0           1.000000      1.0000000        1.0000000

Fairshare​

Each account tracks its own fairshare. When not specifying your account, your default account is used according to the rules below.

info

If you have a research account (grp_) and a class account (class_), your research account will always be your default.

If you have multiple research accounts or class accounts, the first account you joined will be the default.

Specifying an account​

You can specify your preferred account for all jobs with -A:

$ salloc -A grp_rcadmins -p ...

$ salloc -A class_598mat -p ...