Xcluster Go-Live

Name the cluster!!

• Win a free hot-apple pie

(Scyld) Development Environment

• Paul's VM plus physical nodes
• Intel vs. AMD software builds?

Software

Intel Compiler - do we need it?

Apps to install on xcluster:

• MPI, multi-core, big-memroy, serial?
• Popular apps (regardless of type; how to determine?):
  • time stamps on app dirs??
  • access time of executable??

New queueing system:

• how/what to configure (e.g. fairshare, queues, "complexes")

Use module or not?

Scyld

• Location of /usr/local/apps, libraries, and languages e.g., Perl
• A bunch more stuff needed here

Cloud Manager

Lab Group Registration:

• Lab VM login nodes

User Accounts:

• New request from PI's
• CAS/LDAP authentication?
• affiliate accounts?

Storage

• HPC IceBreaker (3 x 48TB chains)
  • one chain for /home, /db, and /usr/local?
  • two chains for scratch?

• Archive IceBreaker (2 x 320TB chains)
  • /oflow and /home, /usr/local backups

• Lustre ClusterStor
  • scratch for zcluster via 10GBE
  • scratch for xcluster via 10GBE, maybe IB later

PB notes

• note: don't want perlwrapper this time
• research: will scratch icebreakers run over Ethernet also, or only IB, for storage?
• research: try out POD
• research: what is difference between building on Intel vs AMD?
• decision: which compiler to use by default? I think we think gcc.
• research/decision: will we do "qlogin"? an interactive queue? what kind of enforceable resource limits?
  • http://www.nics.tennessee.edu/~troy/pbstools/ for a qlogin
  • dunno about resource limits yet
• decision: paths for /usr/local apps?
• research: can scyldev see zhead license server?
  • will know after testing the now-installed PGI
• decision: RPMs vs not for /usr/local
• todo: install lmod (is ready to build)
  • want it to heed /opt/scyld/modulefiles as well as other location
• todo: install CUDA
• research: can we put Intel compilers on scyldev?
• decision: enable rsh on compute nodes?
• research: figure out node naming scheme. See if we can get the syntax for our customary hostnamse in beowulf config file.
• decision: is 1024 a sufficient max per-user process limit?
• decision: is 1024 a sufficient max per-user open files limit?
• research: need new IP allocation scheme
• research: do any zcluster nodes have distinct kernel command line args?
• todo': if we want users ssh to nodes for jobs, need e.g. /etc/profile.d/ssh-key.sh
• todo: grep for "nodenumber" in the PDF files to get a list of per-node config file
• todo: build Lustre client. Probably need Xyratex help.

Documentation

• cloud, login nodes, etc.
• queuing system