This is an old revision of the document!
This page will be maintained and provide information to get users started using the compute cluster. It is a merger of the old “brief description” page and the “queue description” page.
The High Performance Compute Cluster (HPCC) is comprised of several login nodes (all are on our internal network (vlan 52) wesleyan.edu so VPN is required for off campus access)
cottontail
(Supermicro 4U), old schedulercottontail2
(Supermicro 1U), new slurm schedulerswallowtail
(Dell PowerEdge 2950 2U), backup scheduler, databasespetaltail
(Dell PowerEdge 2950 2U), test box, Warewulf provisioning CentOS6hpcmon
(supermicro 1U, centos6)greentail52
(SuperMicro 36+2, 2U), serving out /sanscratch sharptail
(Supermicro 4U), /lvm_data (backup), /zfshomes replicationsharptail2
(Supermicro 2U), disaster recovery for off site (active users only)rstore4
and rstore5
(Supermicro 4U), replicated, Samba shares (2x 220T)rstore6
and rstore7
(Supermicro 4U), replicated, Samba shares (2x 220T)mstore0/mindstorsrv1
(Supermicro 4U), replicated, mounted on all HPC nodes (2x 110T)Several types of compute nodes are available via the scheduler:
Compute node categories which usually align with queues:
All queues are available for job submissions via all login nodes. Some nodes on Infiniband switches for parallel computational jobs (queues: mw256fd, hp12). Our total job slot count is roughly 2,144 with our physical core count 1,480. Our total teraflops compute capacity is about 58 cpu side, 25 gpu side (double precision floating point) and 702 gpu side (mixed mode). Our total memory footprint is about 528 GB gpu side, 8,532 GB cpu side.
Home directory file system are provided (via NFS or IPoIB) by the node hpcstore
(our file server) from a direct attached disk array. In total, 190 TB of /zfshomes disk space is accessible to the users. Node greentail52
makes available 55 TB of scratch space at /sanscratch via NFS. In addition all nodes provide local scratch space at /localscratch (excludes queue tinymem). The scheduler automatically makes directories in both these scratch areas for each job (named after JOBPID). Backup services for /zfshomes are provided via disk-to-disk replication from node hpcstore
to node sharptail
disk arrays. The TrueNAs/ZFS appliance performs daily snapshots with a retention window of 365 days. Some faculty have their home directories on node ringtail
which provides 33 TB via /home33. Some faculty also have their own storage (2x 110 TB via /mindstore). All home directories will migrate to a FreeNAS/ZFS appliance named hpcstore
in 2020 (190T usable, scalable to 1.2P, ETA summer 2020).
Two (old) Rstore storage servers each provide about 104 TB of usable backup space which is not mounted on the compute nodes. Each Rstore server's content is replicated to a dedicated passive standby server of same size, located in same data center but in different racks. As of Spring 2019 we have added two new Rstore servers of 220 T each, fully backed up with replication. Faculty may request shares for their labs to off load static content from the HPCC.
Commercial software has their own queue limited by available licenses. There are no scheduler license resources, just queue jobs up in appropriate queue. Commercial software jobs are processed on the nodes of mw256fd and mw128.
Queue | Nr Of Nodes | Total GB Mem Per Node | Total Cores In Queue | Switch | Hosts | Notes |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
stata | na | na | na | QDR Infiniband | any host | 6 licenses |
Note: Matlab and Mathematica now have “unlimited licenses”.
Queue | Nr Of Nodes | Total GB Mem Per Node | Job SLots In Queue | Switch | Hosts | Notes |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
hp12 | 32 | 12 | 256 | QDR infiniband | n1-n32 | CPU |
mwgpu | 5 | 256 | 120 | QDR infiniband | n33-n37 | GPU & CPU |
mw256fd | 8 | 256 | 192 | QDR infiniband | n38-n45 | CPU |
tinymem | 14 | 32 | 448 | gigabit ethernet | n39-n59 | CPU |
mw128 | 18 | 128 | 648 | gigabit ethernet | n60-n77 | CPU |
amber128 | 1 | 128 | 24 | gigabit ethernet | n78 | GPU & CPU |
exx96 | 12 | 96 | 432 | gigabit ethernet | n79-n90 | GPU & CPU |
Some guidelines for appropriate queue usage with detailed page links:
There are no wall time limits in our HPCC environment except for queue test
. You are responsible for checkpointing though. Consult these pages, all nodes in all queues are DMTCP enabled (read DMTCP. Login nodes and storage nodes are on UPS but all compute nodes are on utility power. Crashes do happen, be prepared to restart your long running jobs.
Home directory policy and Rstore storage options HomeDir and Storage Options
Checkpointing is supported in all queues, how it works DMTCP page
For a list of software installed consult Software List page, endless…
Details on all scratch spaces consult Scratch Spaces page
For HPCC acknowledgements consult Acknowledgement page
Sample scripts for job submissions (serial, array, parallel, forked and gpu) can be found at /zfshomes/hmeij/jobs/
and /zfshomes/hmeij/k20redo
From off-campus you need to VPN in first, download GlobalProtect client at http://vpn.wesleyan.edu