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Using Drona Composer

Drona Composer provides a 100% graphical interface to create and run any workflow without the need to write a Slurm script or even be aware of Slurm syntax. It guides you to provide the relevant information to generate and submit a job for many different workflows and environments.

Accesing Drona Composer

Drona is available on all HPRC Portals. Once you log in to your favorite portal, go to the Jobs tab and select Drona Composer. This will open a new window showing the Drona composer interface.

Drona Environments

Drona provides a number environments to choose from. The image below shows a screenshot of the Drona composer interface with a dropdown menu of some of the environments.

Drona composer checks for environments in the following two locations

  • Drona system directory
  • $SCRATCH/drona_composer/environments

The screenshot above shows system environments in black and environments in your SCRATCH directory in blue. HPRC provides environments for numerous research areas. In a later section we show how to import additional environments to your SCRATCH directory.

Drona Input Form

Once you select an environment, additional fields relevant to the selected environment will become visible. In this case, we will show the Generic environment. The Generic environment is the most flexible, allowing you to create any job script. The next screenshot shows the expanded form, to guide you in providing all the relevant information

Some of the form's fields include a module element (to easily add all the modules needed in your job script),a field to upload data and scripts, a field where you can specify what kind of accelerator (if any) you want to use, and fields to specify common job requirements and advanced Batch scheduler-specific options. For other environments, these fields would be very different and specific to that particular environment.

To get additional information for any of the input fields, hover over the little question mark. It will show additional information and help.

NOTE: You are not required to enter values for all (or any) of the fields. When a nu value is specified, Drona composer will use default values. Once you are finished entering values, click the "preview" button.

Drona Preview Window

The next image shows a screenshot of the preview window

The preview window contains various components,

Warning Pane

Drona composer will analyze the provided input values to make sure there are no mistakes or inconsistencies. The warning pane can also show environment-specific messages to assist you. For example, in the screenshot the warning shows that a GPU was requested for 4 days. However, on ACES, the maximum wall time to request a GPU is two days.

Generated script tabs

Drona Composer will generate the job scripts based on your input. It will insert code for requested modules and changes to the correct directory. For most environments, it will also set up and execute that environment. All the job script windows are fully editable. For the Generic profile, this is the place where you enter the commands you want to execute in the job.

Importing Drona Composer Environments

HPRC provides environments from a variety of research areas. These environments are available in a repository where you can import from. Next to the envionements dropdown, you will find a button with a + button. If you click this button, it will pop up a new window with available environments you can import. The next image shows a screenshot of the import window.

To import an environment, just click the add buton and Drona Composer will copy the environment to $SCRATCH/drona_composer/environments.

Demo of Drona Composer

To see Drona composer in action, please check out the YouTube video below. Note, that this is a older version of composer with some of the newer features missing.