Quickstart

Create a cluster

The simplest command creates a cluster named default with one controller and one worker:

sind create cluster

This is equivalent to using this configuration:

kind: Cluster
name: default
nodes:
  - role: controller
  - role: worker

sind will:

Set up mesh infrastructure (network, DNS, SSH) if not already present
Create a cluster network and volumes
Generate munge keys and Slurm configuration
Start all node containers
Wait for all nodes to become ready

Check cluster status

sind get clusters

NAME      NODES (S/C/W)   SLURM    STATUS
default   2 (0/1/1)       25.11    running

View individual nodes:

sind get nodes

NAME                 ROLE         STATUS
controller.default   controller   running
worker-0.default     worker       running

For detailed health information:

sind status

Run Slurm commands

Open an interactive shell on the controller (or submitter, if configured):

sind enter

Or run one-shot commands without an interactive session:

sind exec -- sinfo
sind exec -- srun hostname

Submit a batch job

Create a batch script in your working directory:

cat > job.sh << 'EOF'
#!/bin/bash
#SBATCH --job-name=hello
echo "Hello from $(hostname)"
sleep 30
EOF

Submit and monitor:

sind exec -- sbatch job.sh

Submitted batch job <JOBID>

Check the job queue:

sind exec -- squeue

View the output after the job completes:

cat slurm-<JOBID>.out

Hello from worker-0

By default, sind create cluster bind-mounts the current directory as /data inside all nodes. Batch scripts and output files are shared across the cluster and accessible directly on your host.

SSH into a node

sind ssh controller
sind ssh worker-0

Scale up

Add more workers to the running cluster:

sind create worker --count 3

Tear down

Delete the cluster:

sind delete cluster default

Or delete all clusters at once:

sind delete cluster --all

When the last cluster is deleted, sind automatically cleans up the shared mesh infrastructure.

Going further

Named clusters with custom configuration

Pipe a configuration directly into sind create cluster:

sind create cluster << 'EOF'
kind: Cluster
name: dev
defaults:
  cpus: 2
  memory: 1g
nodes:
  - controller
  - submitter
  - worker: 3
EOF

Or use a configuration file:

sind create cluster --config cluster.yaml

Multiple clusters can run side by side — each gets its own network, volumes, and DNS namespace. See Cluster Configuration for all available options.