Node Definitions

Node roles

Role	Count	Required	Slurm daemons	Description
`controller`	exactly 1	yes	slurmctld	Cluster controller
`submitter`	0–1	no	none (clients only)	Job submission node
`worker`	1+	yes	slurmd	Worker nodes

Node parameters

Parameter	Scope	Default	Description
`image`	global + per-node	`ghcr.io/gsi-hpc/sind-node:latest`	Container image
`cpus`	global + per-node	`1`	CPU limit
`memory`	global + per-node	`"512m"`	Memory limit
`tmpSize`	global + per-node	`"256m"`	tmpfs size for `/tmp`
`count`	worker only	`1`	Number of worker nodes
`managed`	worker only	`true`	Start slurmd and add to slurm.conf

Per-node values override the defaults section, which in turn overrides the built-in defaults.

Shorthand syntax

Nodes can be specified in a compact form when only role and count are needed:

nodes:
  - controller               # bare role string
  - submitter
  - worker: 3                # role with count

This is equivalent to:

nodes:
  - role: controller
  - role: submitter
  - role: worker
    count: 3

Shorthand and full forms can be mixed in the same configuration.

Managed vs unmanaged workers

By default, workers are managed: sind starts slurmd and adds the node to sind-nodes.conf so Slurm knows about it. This is the typical setup.

Unmanaged workers (managed: false) are created as containers but sind does not start slurmd and does not add them to the Slurm configuration. This is useful for:

Testing manual node registration workflows
Simulating nodes that join the cluster later
Running custom Slurm configurations

nodes:
  - role: worker
    count: 3              # 3 managed workers

  - role: worker
    count: 2
    managed: false        # 2 unmanaged workers

Unmanaged workers can also be created dynamically:

sind create worker --count 2 --unmanaged

Default nodes

When the nodes section is omitted entirely, sind creates a minimal cluster:

nodes:
  - role: controller
  - role: worker