This package will allow you to send function calls as jobs on a computing cluster with a minimal interface provided by the Q
function:
# install the package if you haven't done so yet
install.packages('clustermq')
# load the library and create a simple function
library(clustermq)
fx = function(x) x * 2
# queue the function call on your scheduler
Q(fx, x=1:3, n_jobs=1)
# list(2,4,6)
Computations are done entirely on the network and without any temporary files on network-mounted storage, so there is no strain on the file system apart from starting up R once per job. All calculations are load-balanced, i.e. workers that get their jobs done faster will also receive more function calls to work on. This is especially useful if not all calls return after the same time, or one worker has a high load.
Browse the vignettes here:
SchedulersAn HPC clusterâs scheduler ensures that computing jobs are distributed to available worker nodes. Hence, this is what clustermq interfaces with in order to do computations.
We currently support the following schedulers (either locally or via SSH):
options(clustermq.scheduler="multiprocess")
options(clustermq.scheduler="PBS"/"Torque")
options(clustermq.scheduler="ssh", clustermq.ssh.host=<yourhost>)
Usage[!TIP] Follow the links above to configure your scheduler in case it is not working out of the box and check the FAQ if your job submission errors or gets stuck
The most common arguments for Q
are:
fun
- The function to call. This needs to be self-sufficient (because it will not have access to the master
environment)...
- All iterated arguments passed to the function. If there is more than one, all of them need to be namedconst
- A named list of non-iterated arguments passed to fun
export
- A named list of objects to export to the worker environmentThe documentation for other arguments can be accessed by typing ?Q
. Examples of using const
and export
would be:
# adding a constant argument
fx = function(x, y) x * 2 + y
Q(fx, x=1:3, const=list(y=10), n_jobs=1)
# exporting an object to workers
fx = function(x) x * 2 + y
Q(fx, x=1:3, export=list(y=10), n_jobs=1)
We can also use clustermq
as a parallel backend in foreach
or BiocParallel
:
# using foreach
library(foreach)
register_dopar_cmq(n_jobs=2, memory=1024) # see `?workers` for arguments
foreach(i=1:3) %dopar% sqrt(i) # this will be executed as jobs
# using BiocParallel
library(BiocParallel)
register(DoparParam()) # after register_dopar_cmq(...)
bplapply(1:3, sqrt)
More examples are available in the User Guide.
Comparison to other packagesThere are some packages that provide high-level parallelization of R function calls on a computing cluster. We compared clustermq
to BatchJobs
and batchtools
for processing many short-running jobs, and found it to have approximately 1000x less overhead cost.
In short, use clustermq
if you want:
Use batchtools
if you:
Donât use batch
(last updated 2013) or BatchJobs
(issues with SQLite on network-mounted storage).
Contributions are welcome and they come in many different forms, shapes, and sizes. These include, but are not limited to:
log_worker=TRUE
.good first issue
tag. Please discuss anything more complicated before putting a lot of work in, Iâm happy to help you get started.Citation[!TIP] Check the User Guide and the FAQ first, maybe your query is already answered there
This project is part of my academic work, for which I will be evaluated on citations. If you like me to be able to continue working on research support tools like clustermq
, please cite the article when using it for publications:
M Schubert. clustermq enables efficient parallelisation of genomic analyses. Bioinformatics (2019). doi:10.1093/bioinformatics/btz284
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