Executors¶
In the Nextflow framework architecture, the executor is the component that determines the system where a pipeline process is run and supervises its execution.
The executor provides an abstraction between the pipeline processes and the underlying execution system. This allows you to write the pipeline functional logic independently from the actual processing platform.
In other words you can write your pipeline script once and have it running on your computer, a cluster resource manager or the cloud by simply changing the executor definition in the Nextflow configuration file.
Local¶
The local executor is used by default. It runs the pipeline processes in the computer where Nextflow is launched. The processes are parallelised by spawning multiple threads and by taking advantage of multi-cores architecture provided by the CPU.
In a common usage scenario, the local executor can be useful to develop and test your pipeline script in your computer, switching to a cluster facility when you need to run it on production data.
SGE¶
The SGE executor allows you to run your pipeline script by using a Sun Grid Engine cluster or a compatible platform (Open Grid Engine, Univa Grid Engine, etc).
Nextflow manages each process as a separate grid job that is submitted to the cluster by using the qsub command.
Being so, the pipeline must be launched from a node where the qsub command is available, that is, in a common usage
scenario, the cluster head node.
To enable the SGE executor simply set to process.executor property to sge value in the nextflow.config file.
The amount of resources requested by each job submission is defined by the following process directives:
LSF¶
The LSF executor allows you to run your pipeline script by using a Platform LSF cluster.
Nextflow manages each process as a separate job that is submitted to the cluster by using the bsub command.
Being so, the pipeline must be launched from a node where the bsub command is available, that is, in a common usage
scenario, the cluster head node.
To enable the LSF executor simply set to process.executor property to lsf value in the nextflow.config file.
The amount of resources requested by each job submission is defined by the following process directives:
Note
LSF supports both per-core and per-job memory limit. Nextflow assumes that LSF works in the per-core memory limits mode, thus it divides the requested memory by the number of requested cpus.
This is not required when LSF is configured to work in per-job memory limit mode. You will need to specified that
adding the option perJobMemLimit in Scope executor in the Nextflow configuration file.
See also the Platform LSF documentation.
SLURM¶
The SLURM executor allows you to run your pipeline script by using the SLURM resource manager.
Nextflow manages each process as a separate job that is submitted to the cluster by using the sbatch command.
Being so, the pipeline must be launched from a node where the sbatch command is available, that is, in a common usage
scenario, the cluster head node.
To enable the SLURM executor simply set to process.executor property to slurm value in the nextflow.config file.
The amount of resources requested by each job submission is defined by the following process directives:
Note
SLURM partitions can be considered jobs queues. Nextflow allows to set partitions by using the above queue
directive.
PBS/Torque¶
The PBS executor allows you to run your pipeline script by using a resource manager belonging to the PBS/Torque family of batch schedulers.
Nextflow manages each process as a separate job that is submitted to the cluster by using the qsub command provided
by the scheduler.
Being so, the pipeline must be launched from a node where the qsub command is available, that is, in a common usage
scenario, the cluster login node.
To enable the PBS executor simply set the property process.executor = 'pbs' in the nextflow.config file.
The amount of resources requested by each job submission is defined by the following process directives:
NQSII¶
The NQSII executor allows you to run your pipeline script by using the NQSII resource manager.
Nextflow manages each process as a separate job that is submitted to the cluster by using the qsub command provided
by the scheduler.
Being so, the pipeline must be launched from a node where the qsub command is available, that is, in a common usage
scenario, the cluster login node.
To enable the NQSII executor simply set the property process.executor = 'nqsii' in the nextflow.config file.
The amount of resources requested by each job submission is defined by the following process directives:
HTCondor¶
The HTCondor executor allows you to run your pipeline script by using the HTCondor resource manager.
Warning
This is an incubating feature. It may change in future Nextflow releases.
Nextflow manages each process as a separate job that is submitted to the cluster by using the condor_submit command.
Being so, the pipeline must be launched from a node where the condor_submit command is available, that is, in a
common usage scenario, the cluster head node.
To enable the HTCondor executor simply set to process.executor property to condor value in the nextflow.config file.
The amount of resources requested by each job submission is defined by the following process directives:
Ignite¶
The Ignite executor allows you to run a pipeline by using the Apache Ignite clustering technology that is embedded with the Nextflow runtime.
To enable this executor set the property process.executor = 'ignite' in the nextflow.config file.
The amount of resources requested by each task submission is defined by the following process directives:
Read the Apache Ignite section in this documentation to learn how to configure Nextflow to deploy and run an Ignite cluster in your infrastructure.
Kubernetes¶
Nextflow provides an experimental support for Kubernetes clustering technology. It allows you to deploy and transparently run a Nextflow pipeline in a Kubernetes cluster.
The following directives can be used to define the amount of computing resources needed and the container(s) to use:
See the Kubernetes documentation to learn how to deploy a workflow execution in a Kubernetes cluster.
AWS Batch¶
Nextflow supports AWS Batch service which allows submitting jobs in the cloud without having to spin out and manage a cluster of virtual machines. AWS Batch uses Docker containers to run tasks, which makes deploying pipelines much simpler.
The pipeline processes must specify the Docker image to use by defining the container directive, either in the pipeline
script or the nextflow.config file.
To enable this executor set the property process.executor = 'awsbatch' in the nextflow.config file.
The pipeline can be launched either in a local computer or a EC2 instance. The latter is suggested for heavy or long running workloads. Moreover a S3 bucket must be used as pipeline work directory.
See the AWS Batch page for further configuration details.
GA4GH TES¶
Warning
This is an experimental feature and it may change in a future release. It requires Nextflow version 0.31.0 or later.
The Task Execution Schema (TES) project by the GA4GH standardisation initiative is an effort to define a standardized schema and API for describing batch execution tasks in portable manner.
Nextflow includes an experimental support for the TES API providing a tes executor which allows
the submission of workflow tasks to a remote execution back-end exposing a TES API endpoint.
To use this feature define the following variables in the workflow launching environment:
export NXF_EXPERIMENTAL_GA4GH=1
export NXF_EXECUTOR_TES_ENDPOINT='http://back.end.com'
Then you will be able to run your workflow over TES using the usual Nextflow command line, i.e.:
nextflow run rnaseq-nf
Tip
If the variable NXF_EXECUTOR_TES_ENDPOINT is omitted the default endpoint is http://localhost:8000.
Known limitation