Alpha Cluster: Account & Partition Requirements
Environment: Alpha (Production) | Effective: September 21, 2026
Starting Monday, September 21, Alpha is retiring its institutional partitions in favor of account-based scheduling. Please review the changes below. Jobs that don't follow the new syntax will be rejected at submission.
- The per-institution partitions (columbia, cornell, cuny, mountsinai, nyu, rit, rochester, rpi, suny) are being retired.
alphais now the default partition. - Every job must specify an account with
--account. Jobs with no resolvable account will be rejected. - Accounts with no active project default to the lowest-priority, preemptible burst QoS. Project accounts default to standard.
- The interactive QoS is being retired from general use. Use test instead for interactive or short testing work.
1. Job submission syntax
Every sbatch / srun submission must include an account and a partition. Jobs with no resolvable account are rejected at submission.
sbatch --account=<your_account> --partition=alpha --qos=standard my_job.sh2. Finding your account
Don't use your username as the account. Check the accounts available to you with:
sacctmgr show associations where user=$USER format=Account%30,QOS%503. Which partition should I use?
| Partition | Use | Notes |
|---|---|---|
alpha | General GPU work | Default. Used for general GPU work. (H100, H200, RTX PRO 6000) |
grace | CPU-bound work | Billed at a lower rate than GPU partitions. ARM-64 Grace-Grace CPUs |
cpu | CPU-only jobs | x86_64 CPU-only resource |
4. QoS quick reference
If you don't specify a QoS, you'll automatically get the default for your account type. burst for institutional accounts, standard for project accounts.
| QoS | Use for | Notes |
|---|---|---|
priority | Time-sensitive work | Highest scheduling priority. 2.0× SU cost, 24-hour wall time, up to 64 GPUs |
test | Interactive sessions, short test jobs | Scheduled ahead of standard/long (short, cheap jobs). 0.5× SU cost, 2-hour wall time, up to 8 GPUs (1 node) |
standard | Regular project work | Default for project accounts. 1.0× SU cost, 48-hour wall time, up to 32 GPUs |
long | Longer cost-sensitive runs | Lower priority than standard. 0.5× SU cost, 7-day wall time, up to 32 GPUs |
burst | No-project / institutional access | Free, lowest priority, preemptible |
5. FAQ
Will my currently running jobs be affected?
No. Jobs already running at cutover are not affected. Only new submissions after Monday, September 21 are subject to the new rules. If you currently rely on an institutional partition without a project account, switch to specifying your project account before then to avoid defaulting to burst.
What happens if I omit --qos?
Nothing breaks. You'll automatically get your account type's default (burst for institutional accounts, standard for project accounts). Only omitting --account causes a rejection.
For assistance, contact support@empireai.edu.
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