Your first job

concept · Reviewed 2026-07-31

A job is one simulation run: software, input files, a command, and hardware. You submit it, Rescale provisions a cluster, runs it, and returns the results. This page covers what to expect before you start the walkthrough.

Before you start

Three things, all covered in account setup:

• You can sign in at your organization's platform URL. See platform regions.
• Your workspace has credit, a deposit, or a card — Rescale checks this at submission and the job won't start without it.
• You have input files. No files of your own? Start from a software tutorial — most include a ready-to-clone job.

What submitting actually does

Five setup steps, then five stages of execution.

Setup: Inputs → Software Settings → Hardware Settings → Automations → Review.

Execution:

Stage	What's happening
Queued	Waiting on capacity or priority policy
Validating Input	Checking your files and command
Starting Cluster	Provisioning hardware — a few minutes
Running Job	Your solver is executing
Stopping Cluster	Syncing results, releasing hardware

You're billed for the cluster while it exists, not just while the solver runs. See monitoring and status for what each stage means when it fails.

Jobs versus workstations

Both consume the same hardware and software catalog. The difference is who drives.

	Job	Workstation
Runs	Unattended, in batch	Interactively, you at the screen
Good for	Solving	Setup, meshing, post-processing
Ends	When the solve finishes	When you stop it

Most real work uses both: set up and inspect on a workstation, solve as a job.

Run it

The full walkthrough. A real job from creation to downloaded results, with the decisions explained as you go:

→ First job tutorial

It takes about 15 minutes and assumes nothing beyond the prerequisites above.

Then

Next	Why
Duplicate the job	The normal way to iterate — a job's own inputs are fixed once it runs
Choose better hardware	More cores isn't always faster, and the cheapest coretype rarely means the cheapest run
Run a parameter sweep	One job over many input variations
Clean up storage	Archiving doesn't stop charges — deletion does

Related

• First job tutorial — the walkthrough
• Account setup — prerequisites
• Core concepts — the wider model
• Create a job — the reference version of the setup flow
• Troubleshooting — when a job fails