HP XC System Software Administration Guide Version 3.0

13. Managing LSF
The Load Sharing Facility (LSF) from Platform Computing Corporation is a batch system resource manager
used on the HP XC system. LSF is an integral part of the HP XC environment.
On an HP XC system, a job is submitted to LSF, which places the job in a queue and allows it to run when
the necessary resources become available. In addition to launching jobs, LSF provides extensive job
management and information capabilities. LSF schedules, launches, controls, and tracks jobs that are submitted
to it according to the policies established by the HP XC site administrator.
Two types of LSF are available for installation on the HP XC:
• Standard LSF
This product is the popular batch system produced by Platform Computing Corporation that has become
an industry standard.
For full information about LSF, refer to the standard LSF documentation set, which is described in the
Section “Related Information” section of this document. LSF manpages are also available online on
the HP XC system.
• LSF-HPC integrated with SLURM (LSF-HPC)
This product is the High Performance LSF product from Platform Computing Corporation and has been
integrated with SLURM to take advantage of SLURM's scalable, efficient resource management and
parallel job support.
The intended primary use of the HP XC system determined which of these LSF products was installed.
This chapter addresses the following topics:
• Administering Standard LSF (page 117)
• Administering LSF-HPC (page 118)
For your convenience, the HP XC Documentation CD contains LSF version 6.1 manuals from Platform
Computing.
Administering Standard LSF
Most topics are covered in the LSF documentation from Platform Computing and are not addressed in detail
in this document.
Standard LSF is installed and configured on all nodes of the HP XC system by default.
The LSF RPM places the LSF tar files from Platform Computing in the /opt/hptc/lsf/files/lsf/
directory. Standard LSF is installed during the operation of the cluster_config utility. Standard LSF is
installed in the /opt/hptc/lsf/top directory. On completion, the conf and work directories are moved
to /hptc_cluster/lsf directory to ensure:
• A single set of LSF configuration files for the HP XC system
• One common working space for preserving and accessing accounting and event data.
The log directory is moved to /var/lsf so that per-node LSF daemon logging is stored locally and that it
is unaffected by updateimage operations. However the logs will be lost during a reimage operation. The
LSF directory containing the binary files remains in /opt/hptc/lsf/top; it will be imaged to all the other
nodes.
Also during the operation of the cluster_config utility, the HP XC nodes without the compute role are
configured to remain closed with 0 job slots available for use. This is done by editing the Hosts section of
the lsb.hosts file and configuring these hosts with MXJ (or Maximum Job Slots) set to zero (0). You
can run LSF commands from these hosts, but no jobs run on them.
Nodes without the compute role are closed with '0' job slots available for use.
The LSF environment is set up automatically for the user on login. LSF commands and their manpages are
readily accessible. The profile.lsf and cshrc.lsf source files are copied from the
/hptc_cluster/lsf/conf directory to the /opt/hptc/lsf/top/env directory, which is specific to
Administering Standard LSF 117