Skip to content

Job Arrays

A job array is a compact representation of many jobs called tasks. Tasks share the same job script, and have the same values for all attributes and resources, with the following exceptions:

  • each task has a unique index, $SLURM_ARRAY_TASK_ID
  • job Identifiers of tasks only differ by their indices
  • the state of tasks can differ

All tasks within a job array have the same scheduling priority and schedule as independent jobs. An entire job array is submitted through a single sbatch command and may be managed by squeue, scancel and scontrol commands as a single job.

Shared Jobscript

All tasks in a job array use the very same single jobscript. Each task runs its own instance of the jobscript. The instances execute different work controlled by the $SLURM_ARRAY_TASK_ID variable.

Example:

Assume we have 900 input files with the name of each beginning with "file" (e.g. file001, ..., file900). Assume we would like to use each of these input files with myprog.x program executable, each as a separate, single node job running 128 threats.

First, we create a tasklist file, listing all tasks - all input files in our example:

$ find . -name 'file*' > tasklist

Then we create a jobscript:

#!/bin/bash
#SBATCH -p qcpu
#SBATCH -A SERVICE
#SBATCH --nodes 1 --ntasks-per-node 1 --cpus-per-task 128 
#SBATCH -t 02:00:00
#SBATCH -o /dev/null

# change to scratch directory
SCRDIR=/scratch/project/$SLURM_JOB_ACCOUNT/$SLURM_JOB_USER/$SLURM_JOB_ID
mkdir -p $SCRDIR
cd $SCRDIR || exit

# get individual tasks from tasklist with index from PBS JOB ARRAY
TASK=$(sed -n "${SLURM_ARRAY_TASK_ID}p" $SLURM_SUBMIT_DIR/tasklist)

# copy input file and executable to scratch
cp $SLURM_SUBMIT_DIR/$TASK input
cp $SLURM_SUBMIT_DIR/myprog.x .

# execute the calculation
./myprog.x < input > output

# copy output file to submit directory
cp output $SLURM_SUBMIT_DIR/$TASK.out

In this example, the submit directory contains the 900 input files, the myprog.x executable, and the jobscript file. As an input for each run, we take the filename of the input file from the created tasklist file. We copy the input file to a scratch directory /scratch/project/$SLURM_JOB_ACCOUNT/$SLURM_JOB_USER/$SLURM_JOB_ID, execute the myprog.x and copy the output file back to the submit directory, under the $TASK.out name. The myprog.x executable runs on one node only and must use threads to run in parallel. Be aware, that if the myprog.x is not multithreaded or multi-process (MPI), then all the jobs are run as single-thread programs, wasting node resources.

Submitting Job Array

To submit the job array, use the sbatch --array command. The 900 jobs of the example above may be submitted like this:

$ sbatch -J JOBNAME --array 1-900 ./jobscript

In this example, we submit a job array of 900 tasks. Each task will run on one full node and is assumed to take less than 2 hours (note the #SBATCH directives in the beginning of the jobscript file, do not forget to set your valid PROJECT_ID and desired queue).

Managing Job Array

Check status of the job array using the squeue --me command, alternatively squeue --me --array.

$  squeue --me --long
          JOBID PARTITION     NAME   USER    STATE       TIME     TIME_LIMI  NODES NODELIST(REASON)
2499924_[1-900]      qcpu  myarray   user  PENDING       0:00      02:00:00      1 (Resources)
Check the status of the tasks using the squeue command. 
$ squeue -j 2499924 --long
    JOBID PARTITION     NAME   USER    STATE       TIME     TIME_LIMI  NODES NODELIST(REASON)
2499924_1      qcpu  myarray   user  PENDING       0:00      02:00:00      1 (Resources)
     .             .        .      .             .    .   .     .    .   .    .
     .             .        .      .             .    .   .     .    .   .    .
2499924_900    qcpu  myarray   user  PENDING       0:00      02:00:00      1 (Resources)

Delete the entire job array. Running tasks will be killed, queueing tasks will be deleted.

$ scancel 2499924

For more information on job arrays, see the SLURM guide.