1.13 Installing Slurm

Key points

1. cm-wlm-setup can run as a guided text menu (TUI) or with command-line options. NVIDIA recommends the TUI.

   What NVIDIA says (1)

   “The recommended way to run the cm-wlm-setup utility is without options or arguments, in which case a TUI dialog starts up.”

   — NVIDIA Base Command Manager 11 Administrator Manual (PDF)

2. A topology plugin tells Slurm how nodes are connected, so it can place a job's nodes close together. BCM 11 adds topology/block and writes topology.conf for you.

   What NVIDIA says (1)

   “BCM 11 introduces support for topology/block. This is required for BCM to enable NVLINK-aware scheduling of Slurm jobs for GB200/GB300 systems.”

   — NVIDIA Mission Control Administration Guide: Slurm Workload Management

3. BCM ships Slurm as packages. Minor updates use the normal package manager. Bigger version changes may need manual configuration adjustments.

   What NVIDIA says (1)

   “WLMs that are packaged with BCM (Slurm) can have their packages updated using standard package update commands (yum update and similar).”

   — NVIDIA Base Command Manager 11 Administrator Manual (PDF)

Key terms

• Workload manager: Software such as Slurm that queues jobs and places them on nodes; BCM adds one with cm-wlm-setup.
• Slurm: An open-source workload manager that queues batch jobs and allocates nodes and GPUs to them.
• topology/block: A Slurm topology plugin that BCM 11 uses for NVLink-aware scheduling on GB200 racks.

Sample question

What is the recommended way to run cm-wlm-setup to install Slurm?