Force Stop a Job

This article describes the function of the Force Stop button located on the Job Status page. Please note that this button is only visible when you click on the Stop button.

When you wish to stop a running job, click on the Stop button. Once the Stop is initiated, all the job files are saved to your Rescale Cloud Storage, which will then be shown on the Results tab. Clicking on the Stop button initiates a few actions in the background, in the order listed below:

• Application prepares for shut down. An application could be any of the software that you selected under the Software Settings page as well as your own software using Bring your Own Software. Some applications and jobs write restart files to allow for the simulation to be restarted from the point where it left off. These restart files in some cases can be large files, which could take significant time to be written out and additional time to upload back to the job results page. This also means that the license that is checked out for the job will be in use until the shutdown process is completed.
• Once the application is shut down, remaining processes are then terminated
• Files are saved to Rescale, which is when you start seeing files on the Results tab
• Job cluster is terminated

Each of the steps listed above has to be performed sequentially and hence add up to the amount of time it takes to terminate a running job. This process is called Graceful Shutdown

In some instances, however, you may want to terminate the job without all of the steps mentioned above. An example is when you don’t need the restart files written out. Or, when you have realized after job submission that the job was set up incorrectly and hence you don’t need to continue the run and don’t need any of the files associated with the job. In such cases, you would use the Force Stop button. Force Stop allows you to skip parts of the Graceful Shutdown job termination process.

• Click on Stop button to initiate a job shutdown
• Click Stop again on the pop-up window to confirm. If normal termination of the job is desired, you can skip the next steps and wait for the job to shut down

• Force Stop button is displayed next to the Stop button. If you wish to skip some of the steps and shut down the cluster, click on Force Stop

• On the pop-up window, select Save all files and upload to the job results page or Terminate the cluster without saving. Save option will save all the files and upload to the job results page, whereas the Terminate option will terminate the cluster without saving

On the Job Logs, you will see a message indicating Stopping job (User terminated)…