[StarCluster] Setting a spot bid

[Justin Riley]

Hi Ben/Simms,

Unfortunately the spot bid is not a supported config option in the current stable version of StarCluster (0.91.2). I've added the ability to specify a SPOT_BID setting within a cluster template in the latest development code if you're interested in testing. This functionality will be available in the 0.92 release. It's taking me forever to release this next version due to other projects at work but I intend to release soon. My apologies to everyone for the extreme delay. At this point I need to update the docs and then it's ready. I plan to have a *much* more frequent incremental release cycle after this next big release comes out.

~Justin


On Mar 21, 2011, at 5:49 PM, Justin Simms justin.simms at gmail.com wrote:

> Ben,
> 
> As far as I can tell, it seems to be the case that there is no conversion
> from the string type to the float or int type that is expected. The way that
> you have provided your argument is correct.
> 
> jts
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: starcluster-bounces at mit.edu [mailto:starcluster-bounces at mit.edu] On
> Behalf Of Benjamin Lambert
> Sent: Monday, March 21, 2011 3:30 PM
> To: starcluster at mit.edu
> Subject: [StarCluster] Setting a spot bid
> 
> Hi StarCluster folks,
> 
> I just came across StarCluster last week.  We've been having some trouble
> with a local physical SGE cluster, and I needed a backup/replacement.  I
> made the mistake of trying to set up an existing Ubuntu AMI to work in
> StarCluster, without knowing what I was getting in to.  But once I gave up
> on that and started fresh from the default SG Ubuntu 10.04 64-bit image, I
> got things up and running smoothly.  Very nice work!
> 
> I'm looking forward to the features planned for version 0.92, especially
> elastic load balancing, add/remove nodes, and EBS-backed AMIs.  Any estimate
> when we might see 0.92?
> 
> I am having a slight issue with bidding for spot instances.  It works just
> fine if I request it through the command line:
> starcluster start --bid=0.50 cluster
> 
> But, if I put the bid in my .starcluster/config file like so:
> [cluster medium]
> KEYNAME = ...
> SPOT_BID = 0.35
> ...
> I get the error:
>>>> Using default cluster template: medium Validating cluster template 
>>>> settings...
> cluster.py:766 - ERROR - spot_bid must be integer or float
> cli.py:243 - ERROR - settings for cluster template "medium" are not valid
> 
> Is the way I've specified this wrong?  Or perhaps, it's being loaded as a
> string and isn't getting converted to a float internally?
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Ben
> 
> 
> Benjamin Lambert
> Ph.D. Student of Computer Science
> Carnegie Mellon University
> www.cs.cmu.edu/~belamber
> Mobile: 617-869-1844
> 
> 
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