Quick Start

To access the Mila Cluster clusters, you will need a Mila account. Please contact Mila systems administrators if you don’t have it already. Our IT support service is available here: https://it-support.mila.quebec/

You will also need to complete and return an IT Onboarding Training to get access to the cluster. Please refer to the Mila Intranet for more informations: https://sites.google.com/mila.quebec/mila-intranet/it-infrastructure/it-onboarding-training

IMPORTANT : Your access to the Cluster is granted based on your status at Mila (for students, your status is the same as your main supervisor’ status), and on the duration of your stay, set during the creation of your account. The following have access to the cluster : Current Students of Core Professors - Core Professors - Staff

mila code

It is recommended to install milatools which will help in the set up of the ssh configuration needed to securely and easily connect to the cluster. milatools also makes it easy to run and debug code on the Mila cluster.

First you need to setup your ssh configuration using mila init. The initialisation of the ssh configuration is explained here and in the mila init section of github page.

Once that is done, you may run VSCode on the cluster simply by using the Remote-SSH extension and selecting mila-cpu as the host (in step 2).

mila-cpu allocates a single CPU and 8 GB of RAM. If you need more resources from within VSCode (e.g. to run a ML model in a notebook), then you can use mila code. For example, if you want a GPU, 32G of RAM and 4 cores, run this command in the terminal:

mila code path/on/cluster --alloc --gres=gpu:1 --mem=32G -c 4

The details of the command can be found in the mila code section of github page. Remember that you need to first setup your ssh configuration using mila init before the mila code command can be used.

Using a Terminal

While VSCode provides a graphical interface for writing and debugging code on the cluster, working on the cluster will require to use a terminal to navigate the filesystem, run commands, and manage jobs.

To open a terminal session on the cluster, connect using:

ssh mila

This will connect you to a login node where you can run commands, submit jobs, and navigate the cluster filesystem.

Next Steps

Once you have access to the cluster, you may want to:

  • Set up a framework: For a quick example of setting up PyTorch on the cluster, see the PyTorch Setup.

  • Keep these references handy:

    • The Cheat Sheet provides a quick reference for common commands and information about the Mila and DRAC clusters.

    • For a comprehensive reference of common terminal commands, see the command line cheat sheet.

Note

Before running a minimal example, make sure to read the Running your code guide, which explains how to submit jobs using Slurm and provides essential information about job submission arguments, partitions, and useful commands.