---
title: Features
sidebar_label: Features
---

import { SlurmClusterFeaturesNav, SlurmClusterBestPractices } from './slurmClusterCards'

# Features

What a TIR Slurm Cluster gives you beyond a scheduler, and where each capability is documented.

<SlurmClusterFeaturesNav />

---

## Feature Reference

| Feature | Summary | Details |
|---------|---------|---------|
| **Slurm on Slinky** | A real, managed Slurm cluster — `sbatch`, `squeue`, `sacct`, partitions, priorities and accounting all behave as documented. You never install or patch a scheduler | [How it works](/docs/tir/SlurmCluster/getting-started/slurm-cluster-concepts) |
| **Container jobs** | Run any Docker or OCI image inside a job with `--container-image`, unprivileged, with native GPU access. Two jobs on one cluster can use completely different framework versions | [Containers](/docs/tir/SlurmCluster/containers/) |
| **Editable `slurm.conf`** | Append your own directives from the console. The platform keeps only the keys that wire the cluster together | [Extra slurm.conf](/docs/tir/SlurmCluster/slurm-configuration/slurm-conf) |
| **Custom partitions** | Up to 20 named queues over chosen nodes, each with its own time limits, defaults and node membership | [Partitions](/docs/tir/SlurmCluster/slurm-configuration/partitions) |
| **Prolog & epilog scripts** | Four script slots — worker and controller, before and after every job — for setup, cleanup, health gating and auditing | [Prolog & Epilog](/docs/tir/SlurmCluster/slurm-configuration/prolog-epilog) |
| **Elastic scaling** | Add or remove worker nodes on a live cluster. Scale-up leaves running jobs untouched | [Scale Cluster](/docs/tir/SlurmCluster/manage/actions#scale-cluster) |
| **Shared storage everywhere** | PFS, SFS, Weka and read-only datasets mounted at the same path on the login node and every worker | [Storage](/docs/tir/SlurmCluster/manage/storage) |
| **GPU health & DCGM metrics** | Per-node and per-GPU utilisation, memory, temperature and power, with XID error detection and single-node reboot | [Nodes](/docs/tir/SlurmCluster/manage/nodes) |
| **Jobs & monitoring without SSH** | Live `squeue` in the browser, GPU and scheduler charts over selectable time ranges, controller and worker logs | [Jobs](/docs/tir/SlurmCluster/manage/jobs) · [Monitoring](/docs/tir/SlurmCluster/manage/monitoring) |
| **Alerts** | Attach alerts to a cluster so problems find you instead of the other way round | [Alerts](/docs/tir/SlurmCluster/manage/monitoring#alerts) |
| **Per-user logins** | Each teammate gets their own SSH identity and a private home directory on shared storage, managed from the console | [Login User Management](/docs/tir/SlurmCluster/connect/login-user-management) |
| **High availability** | Node failures are isolated and the cluster recovers automatically. Job-level resilience is yours, via checkpointing | [High availability](/docs/tir/SlurmCluster/getting-started/slurm-cluster-concepts#high-availability-and-what-it-does-not-cover) |
| **Network control** | Reserved and VPC IPs, and security groups you manage per cluster | [Network & security](/docs/tir/SlurmCluster/manage/network-security) |
| **Full API coverage** | Every console action maps to a REST call, so provisioning and management can be automated end to end | [API reference](/api/tir/clusters/training-cluster/) |

---

## Slurm Cluster vs a Single GPU Node

| | Slurm Cluster | Single node |
|--|---------------|-------------|
| Multi-node training | Yes, with an RDMA fabric between nodes | No |
| Job queue and priorities | Yes | No |
| Sharing between people | Yes, with per-user identities and partitions | Awkward |
| Container per job | Yes | You manage the container yourself |
| Billing | Per node, per hour; jobs free | Per node, per hour |
| Best for | Distributed training, shared team capacity, batch workloads | Interactive development, single-GPU experiments |

---

<SlurmClusterBestPractices />

---

## Related Resources

- [Getting started](/docs/tir/SlurmCluster/getting-started/)
- [UI Guide](/docs/tir/SlurmCluster/ui-guide)
- [Slurm Configuration](/docs/tir/SlurmCluster/slurm-configuration/)
- [Billing](/docs/tir/SlurmCluster/billing)