Define a Service Task

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Applies To: Microsoft HPC Pack 2012, Microsoft HPC Pack 2012 R2

A Service task runs a command or service on all resources that are allocated to the job. New instances of the command start when new resources are added to the job or if a previously running instance exits and the resource that it was running on is still allocated to the job. Service tasks continue to start instances until the job is canceled or stopped, the maximum run time expires, or until the maximum number of instances (sub-tasks) is reached.

You can use the following procedure to create a Service task using HPC Job Manager.

Note

To complete this procedure, you must have been added as a user on the cluster, or you must be a member of a domain group that has been added as a user on the cluster. For more information, contact your cluster administrator.

Add a Service Task

In HPC Job Manager, the option to add a task is available in the New Job, Modify Job, and Copy Job dialog boxes. As an example, the following procedure describes how to add a task in the New Job dialog box.

To add a Service task

  1. In HPC Job Manager, in the Actions pane, click New Job.

  2. In the left pane of the New Job dialog box, click Edit Tasks.

  3. Point to the Add button, click the down arrow, and then click Service Task.

  4. In the task dialog box, type a name for your task.

  5. Specify a command for the task.

  6. Click OK to add the task to your job. The new task now appears in the list of tasks for your job.

  7. You can define additional Task properties, such as the Execution Settings and Required Resources by selecting the task in the list and modifying the property values in the Task Properties pane.

Additional considerations

  • Tasks that are submitted through a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) client and tasks that use the HPC Services for Excel run as Service tasks.

  • You cannot add a Basic or a Parametric Sweep task to a job that contains a Service task.

  • The following task properties do not apply to tasks which are started on a per-resource basis, and they cannot be set on Node Preparation, Node Release, or Service tasks:

    • Number of cores, sockets, nodes

    • Required nodes

    • Exclusive

    • Rerunnable

    • Depends (task dependencies)

    • Parameter sweep settings

  • For information about basic terminology, opening HPC Job Manager, and connecting to a cluster, see Overview of HPC Job Manager.

Additional references