[slurm-users] remote license

[Brian Andrus]

So if you follow the links to: https://slurm.schedmd.com/licenses.html 
you should see the difference.

Local licenses are just a counter that is setup in slurm.conf
Remote liceneses are a counter in a database (the database is "remote"), 
so you can change/update it dynamically. So, you could change their 
allocation with a sacctmgr command. It is especially useful when you are 
managing multiple clusters that share licenses. You can allocate that a 
certain number are allowed by each cluster and change that if needed.

If you got creative, you could keep the license count that is in the 
database updated to match the number free from flexlm to stop license 
starvation due to users outside slurm using them up so they really 
aren't available to slurm.

Brian Andrus


On 9/15/2022 3:34 PM, Davide DelVento wrote:
> I am a bit confused by remote licenses.
>
> https://lists.schedmd.com/pipermail/slurm-users/2020-September/006049.html
> (which is only 2 years old) claims that they are just a counter, so
> like local licenses. Then why call them remote?
>
> Only a few days after, this
> https://lists.schedmd.com/pipermail/slurm-users/2020-September/006081.html
> appeared to imply (but not clearly stated) that the remote license are
> not simply a counter, but then it's not clear how they are different.
>
> The current documentation (and attempts to run the "add resource"
> command) says that one must use the license count, which seems to
> imply they are just a simple counter (but then what do they need the
> server for)?
>
> So what is what?
>
> In my cursory past experience with this, it seemed that it were
> possible to query a license server (at least some of them) to get the
> actual number of available licenses and schedule (or let jobs pending)
> accordingly. Which would be very helpful for the not-too-uncommon
> situation in which the same license server provides licenses for both
> the HPC cluster and other non-slurm-controlled resources, such a
> user's workstations. Was that impression wrong, or perhaps somebody
> scripted it in some way? If the latter, does anybody know if those
> scripts are publicly available anywhere?
>
> Thanks
>