FABRIC does not use Slurm or another batch scheduler and has no queues or partitions. Experiments are provisioned as project-scoped slices containing virtual machine slivers, network services, storage, and permitted experimental hardware. FABRIC work is therefore created, submitted, monitored, renewed, and deleted through the FABRIC Portal or FABlib rather than with commands such as sbatch, squeue, or scancel.
Before creating a slice, review current site and component availability through the FABRIC Resource Overview or query the current inventory through FABlib. Available capacity varies by site and changes as experiments are created and released.
A minimal FABlib example that creates and submits one virtual machine sliver is:
from fabrictestbed_extensions.fablib.fablib import FablibManager
fablib = FablibManager()
slice = fablib.new_slice(name="access-example")
node = slice.add_node(name="node1")
slice.submit()
slice.show()
print(node.get_ssh_command())
For a real experiment, specify the required site, CPU cores, RAM, disk size, image, network services, and optional hardware components when building the slice. Specialized components such as GPUs, FPGAs, SmartNICs, NVMe devices, or programmable switches may require additional project permissions and are subject to site availability.
Useful slice-management operations include:
slice.show() # Display current slice information
print(slice.get_state()) # Display the current slice state
slice.renew(days=1) # Extend the lease by one day
slice.delete() # Release all resources in the slice
slice.delete() permanently releases the resources assigned to that slice. Run it only after the experiment and any required data transfers are complete.
FABRIC slices have finite leases rather than scheduler wall-time limits. Renew a slice before its lease expires when continued use is permitted, and delete the slice as soon as the experiment is complete so the resources return to the shared testbed.
See the FABlib API and programming guide, the complete FABlib class and method reference, the FABRIC example notebooks, and the live FABRIC resource inventory.