[Jlab-scicomp-briefs] batch farm memory requirements

[Sandy Philpott]

Dear JLab Data Analysis Cluster Users,

We are looking into ways to adjust fair share on the farm, to include not just job slots but also memory footprint -- currently ~400 job slots are available, but all pending jobs are requesting too much memory to fit in,  because running jobs are using more than 2 GB / core.  Also, several users are running not only memory intensive but 2 and 3 day long jobs as well.

Please check your actual memory usage upon job completion, and reduce your memory request if the memory is not actually being used. If you can run multi-threaded code rather than single core jobs, this too will help efficiency in overall farm job throughput.  Note that the newest FY14 farm nodes procured and awaiting arrival have 1.5 GB memory per core.

Let us know if you need any help analyzing your job requirements. And, if you have small memory requirement jobs, now's a good time to get them in for fast turnaround!

Regards,
Sandy