Set the Priority of a Job

You can set the priority of an import or analysis job where you specify analysis management settings, whether during Import or during an analysis:

Low

A job that is not critical and could be run later than other, more urgent jobs. Touchstone initiates low priority jobs in the order in which they are submitted using the following criteria:

• If and when sufficient capacity is available

• If and when there are no normal, high, or top priority jobs waiting

• If the job has been scheduled to run immediately or when the current date and time is after the scheduled date and time of a scheduled job

Normal (Default)

A job that is not critical but should run at the next available opportunity. Touchstone initiates normal priority jobs in the order in which they are submitted using the following criteria:

• If and when sufficient capacity is available

• If and when there are no high or top priority jobs waiting

• If the job has been scheduled to run immediately or when the current date and time is after the scheduled date and time of a scheduled job

High

A critical job that must be initiated as soon as possible. Touchstone initiates high priority jobs in the order in which they are submitted using the following criteria:

• If and when sufficient capacity is available

• If and when there are no top priority jobs waiting

• If the job has been scheduled to run immediately or when the current date and time is after the scheduled date and time of a scheduled job

Top Priority

A highly critical job that must skip to the front of the line. Touchstone initiates top priority jobs in the order in which they are submitted using the following criteria:

• If and when sufficient capacity is available

• If the job has been scheduled to run immediately or when the current date and time is after the scheduled date and time of a scheduled job

Note:

Only System Administrators can assign Top Priority to a job. For more information about the System Administrator user role, see Role Permissions.

Preemption

The Touchstone job prioritization feature makes use of the default HPC Server Scheduler. By default, this Scheduler creates all jobs as not preemptive. To understand the concept of preemption, it is important to note that Touchstone jobs often consist of multiple tasks. A preemptive job does not stop or interrupt a task that is currently running as part of another job. Rather, a preemptive higher priority job can start running once a task that is part of another lower priority job completes, thereby releasing some processing capacity. This preemption behavior does not guarantee that the higher priority job will finish first, as lower priority jobs also attempt to use resources whenever possible. Note that preemption does not impact the results of a job.