Submit a job to a service class (bsub -sla)

About this task

You submit jobs to a service class as you would to a queue, except that a service class is a higher level scheduling policy that makes use of other, lower level LSF policies like queues and host partitions to satisfy the service-level goal that the service class expresses.

The service class name where the job is to run is configured in lsb.serviceclasses. If the SLA does not exist or the user is not a member of the service class, the job is rejected.

Outside of the configured time windows, the SLA is not active, and LSF schedules jobs without enforcing any service-level goals. Jobs flow through queues following queue priorities even if they are submitted with -sla.

Tip: Submit your jobs with a run time limit (-W option) or make sure that the queue specifies a run time limit (RUNLIMIT in the queue definition in lsb.queues). If you do not specify a run time limit, LSF automatically adjusts the optimum number of running jobs according to the observed run time of finished jobs.

Procedure

To submit a job to a service class for SLA-driven scheduling, run bsub -sla service_class_name.
For example:
bsub -W 15 -sla Kyuquot sleep 100

submits the UNIX command sleep together with its argument 100 as a job to the service class named Kyuquot.

Note: As of Fix Pack 15, when you define the -sla (service class) option for the bsub command, and the job is forwarded, the job retains the -sla argument in the forwarded cluster if the following are true:
  1. The service class defined exists on forwarded cluster.
  2. The job has appropriate access to the service class defined.

Both submission and execution clusters must be updated with Fix Pack 15 for this to work.