Overview

SeaWulf uses a fairshare scheduling system to allocate resources fairly across all users. Job priority is influenced by historical usage, job size, and requested time. Understanding how fairshare and priority work can help you reduce wait times and maximize throughput. For an introduction to the scheduler, see the SLURM Overview.

Key Concepts

• Fairshare - users who have consumed fewer resources recently receive a higher fairshare score
• Scheduling priority - determines the order in which jobs are considered for scheduling based on factors such as queue, requested resources, walltime, and fairshare
• Priority access - certain queues give specific groups higher scheduling priority when resources are constrained

Tips for Maximizing Throughput

• Submit smaller jobs when possible; multiple smaller jobs often start faster than one very large job.
• Use appropriate queues that match your job’s walltime and node requirements. See Node Utilization for guidance on resource matching.
• Stagger job submissions to avoid sending many jobs to the queue simultaneously.
• Monitor your fairshare score using squeue -u <username> or other SLURM commands. For detailed job monitoring, see Job Management.
• Use job arrays for repeated tasks to reduce queue overhead and improve scheduling efficiency.