HPC Grid Tutorial: How to Utilize Features and Constraints

Nodes have features assigned to them. Users can specify these features in their jobs by using the constraint option. Only the nodes having the features matching the job constraints will be used to satisfy the request. Multiple constraints may be specified with AND and OR. For a list of the nodes and their respective resources visit the Available Nodes page. 

Nodes and their respective features can also be viewed with the command: sinfo -o %f

To request a feature, use the following directive in your job script:

#SBATCH --constraint=<feature-name>

Requesting multiple constraints:

AND &

#SBATCH --constraint="intel&10e"

OR |

#SBATCH --constraint="e5-2680v2|6226|6240"

This directive can also be used when using srun:

srun -q debug -t 10:0 --constraint="intel" --pty bash

 

To verify that your job is utilizing the feature you requested, you can check with the following command: scontrol show job <job-id>