With Comsol GUI applications and proper execution of batch jobs on the cluster, approximations and calculations at large scales within the realm of modeling methods are achievable. At present, we have access to a single node in terms of licenses for cluster calculations. However, it is still possible to allocate partitions with over 2048 GB of RAM. Further information about the VSC Cluster here →VSC WIKI
Start graphical session from a terminal window in !noMachine
module purge module load Comsol/6.1 gpurender comsol &
If you consider working with a GUI in Comsol, please note that either 16 (GUI vsc4) or 32 (GUI vsc5) processes and 256 GB RAM are allocated.
Submit your Job to the Cluster
Generate both an input file and an identical output file in COMSOL using the terminal on NoMachine! (you can also do it on your local computer if you have COMSOL installed). Submit your job then to the cluster; see job script below! This will allow you to review the results after successful job calculation on the cluster from the output file either on NoMachine! with COMSOL or on your local computer with COMSOL. You can check with the log file if your job is successful calculated.
Example script for VSC4
In this script file, you allocate 8 processes on a single node with 768 GB of memory. This is one example, but we recommend up to 8.
Note: BATCH Scripts should be written in LINUX Editor! Sometimes the converting command (from Windows Text File to Linux Text File) does not work!
Example: LogFile VSC4: Job is running
Please check the number of your allocated processes with the commands in your terminal:
sqeue -u "$whoami" ssh node(ID) htop
and check also if your job is running in your log file. Attention: the numbers of the allocated processes and nodes are shown right in terminal!
Example Script for VSC5
I used 4 allocated processes
Note: BATCH Scripts should be written in LINUX Editor! Sometimes the converting command (from Windows Text File to Linux Text File) does not work!
This here is an example script for running Comsol in Batch mode at VSC5, be aware, that I used the devel qos before, only for testing; I recommend to you to use it too, check if your job is running with all the allocated processes, with the commands:
sqeue -u "$whoami" ssh node(ID) htop
and afterwards, to use the normal qos!
Example Logfile for the Job running on VSC5
Multiple Studies
In some cases, when there is a limitation in available RAM (QOS/PARTITION), it is advisable to divide your study into multiple segments (In this example a transient analysis for turbulent fluid flow and transient mapping after). You submit then each segment as a separate study to the cluster. In COMSOL, achieving this is straightforward. Simply insert the study tag(find the Study Tag in the Model Builder, it is located in the Study properties for example Study 2 std2) into your job script, as demonstrated in the example below:
