# Cluster not being utilized

**URL:** <https://discuss.ray.io/t/cluster-not-being-utilized/1419>\
**Category:** Ray Core\
**Created:** [March 27, 2021, 2:20pm UTC](https://discuss.ray.io/t/cluster-not-being-utilized/1419 "2021-03-27T14:20:19Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Jeffrey\_Waldron](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/user_avatar/discuss.ray.io/jeffrey_waldron/32/36_2.png) [@Jeffrey\_Waldron](https://discuss.ray.io/u/Jeffrey_Waldron)\
**Post date:** [March 27, 2021, 2:20pm UTC](https://discuss.ray.io/t/cluster-not-being-utilized/1419/1 "2021-03-27T14:20:19Z")

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I have a local cluster, 19 nodes including the head, with 436 total workers… I’ve confirmed they are alive and available… I have created a large queue of tasks, via a list of calls to some function.remote, and then am processing the results via ray.wait … when looking the dashboard, it is only showing 76/436 being utilized… and really only 4 of 19 nodes… the rest are all showing 0/24 … I’m on Ray 1.2 … the function iteself is chunking a .csv file and returning some match if available. Any suggestions to troubleshoot?

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**Author:** ![sangcho](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/user_avatar/discuss.ray.io/sangcho/32/425_2.png) [@sangcho](https://discuss.ray.io/u/sangcho)\
**Post date:** [March 27, 2021, 10:20pm UTC](https://discuss.ray.io/t/cluster-not-being-utilized/1419/2 "2021-03-27T22:20:31Z")

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Ray 1.2 (and until 1.3), Ray prefers to saturate nodes one by one. That says tasks won’t likely to go other nodes until the first N nodes are fully saturated.

At 1.3, you can change the behavior to randomly load balance tasks to all nodes in the cluster by starting a head node with `system-config`

```auto

ray start --head --system-config='{"scheduler_loadbalance_spillback":true}'

```

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![sangcho](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/user_avatar/discuss.ray.io/sangcho/32/425_2.png) [@sangcho](https://discuss.ray.io/u/sangcho)\
**Post date:** [March 27, 2021, 10:21pm UTC](https://discuss.ray.io/t/cluster-not-being-utilized/1419/3 "2021-03-27T22:21:12Z")

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Note 1.3 will be released in about 2~ish weeks.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Jeffrey\_Waldron](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/user_avatar/discuss.ray.io/jeffrey_waldron/32/36_2.png) [@Jeffrey\_Waldron](https://discuss.ray.io/u/Jeffrey_Waldron)\
**Post date:** [March 28, 2021, 1:38pm UTC](https://discuss.ray.io/t/cluster-not-being-utilized/1419/4 "2021-03-28T13:38:12Z")

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thanks for that update… but if the tasks are significantly greater than the number of workers, i.e. I submitted like 240k tasks to 436 workers… why does the dashboard seem to only show PID for 76-100 out of 436 workers … when I took a different tact… and instead moved the task to an Actor, and then created an ActorPool of ~400 workers… I then see the cluster being saturated with work on the dashboard… I’m just wondering is it just a dashboard thing… when submitting tasks, is it really not utilizing the cluster, or is it just a reporting issue?

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![sangcho](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/user_avatar/discuss.ray.io/sangcho/32/425_2.png) [@sangcho](https://discuss.ray.io/u/sangcho)\
**Post date:** [March 30, 2021, 7:23pm UTC](https://discuss.ray.io/t/cluster-not-being-utilized/1419/5 "2021-03-30T19:23:13Z")

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Hmm I see. I have a couple questions;

- How long are your tasks?
- Can you also try running `ray status` and see if the number of nodes are all correct?