Metamorphosis of the bonus mode

Since 4th November, in consultation with GENCI and the computing centers IDRIS and TGCC, CINES has modified the functioning of OCCIGEN’s SLURM job manager, in particular the job class – “bonus” has been suppressed.

A project that has obtained hours on one of GENCI’s machines has an initial allocation of hours. This allowance has now been increased by 25% of supplementary hours (bonus hours), which will be preferably scheduled during the under-utilised period of the target machine.

More precisely:

• As soon as the consumption of a project exceeds 125% of its initial allocation of hours, this project will be blocked and no member of this project could submit any more jobs.
• A priority system makes it possible to manage the execution of jobs on the machine in the most equitable way possible among projects. This system takes into account various parameters, including in particular the initial allocation of hours and already consumed hours (the actual consideration decreases exponentially with time, with a half-life of 14 days).
  • A project that has under-consumed in the recent past (i.e. the last days/weeks), has a high priority for the execution of its jobs.
  • A project that has over-consumed in the recent past (i.e. the last days/weeks) is not blocked, it can continue to execute but with a low priority and can therefore benefit from the cycles available on the target machine in case of low load.
• This priority system maximizes the effective use of machine cycles by:
  • Encouraging projects to use their hours regularly throughout the year to maximize hours with a high priority of execution
  • Allowing projects, in the event of under-utilisation of the machine, either to catch up on a consumption delay or to get ahead despite a low priority of execution, with no limit on hours other than that of 125% of their initial allocation of hours.