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HPC-Cluster
HPC-Cluster - Access and Use
Since November 2004, the LSS maintains a 52-CPU High-Performance-Cluster. In the following, general information and hints
about the usage of the machine is given. For problem reports, questions, suggestions etc. please mail to
clusteradm@immd10.informatik.uni-erlangen.de.
Hardware
The cluster consists of 9 dual-, 8 quad-nodes and a fileserver. The machines have the following specifications in common:
- CPU: AMD Opteron, 2.2 GHz, 1 MB L2 cache
- RAM: DDR 333, 4 GB for dual-, 16 GB for the quad-nodes
All nodes are connected with a GBit-interface, the quad-nodes additionally with Infiniband. Latter provides a bandwidth of
up to 10 GBit/s. The fileserver has a capacity of roughly 500 GB disk space. Local disk space of about 70 GB is provided
on each node also.
Access
In order to obtain a login for the cluster, please mail to
clusteradm@immd10.informatik.uni-erlangen.de
providing a short description of your project and the required resources. In case you recieve a login,
your public ssh-key will be neccessary for authentication.
The node names are as follows:
- Front-End: fauia50
- Quad-Nodes: fauia<51-58>
- Dual-Nodes: fauia<59-67>
Access to the cluster is granted via authentication by password or ssh-keys. The front-end is called
fauia50.informatik.uni-erlangen.de where all users have to login fist. When logging in, the
option -A for ssh-keys is essential. Moreover, the ssh-agent on your local machine has to be started.
ssh-agent $SHELL
ssh-add
ssh -A <login>@fauia50.informatik.uni-erlangen.de
After login to fauia50, you will encounter a menu containing all available machines for interactive work.
By scrolling up or down with cursor keys you can select a machine. Pressing enter will direct you to the
chosen one.
For profiling purposes, please use fauia59. It contains a kernel with the perfctr-Patch (PAPI). An attempt to login directly
to the shown machines will be blocked. To logout, type exit and choose Exit in the menu.
Environment
Because there are multiple compiler and library options available for Linux on the opteron, the Environment Modules Package has been provided for easily switching between different packages. You can find a full description of the modules project on the sourceforge modules homepage.
In order to make use of the modules utilities on the cluster, you will need to add a new line to your shell .rc file:
.bashrc
# bash resource file
. /central/modules/default/init/bash
...
.cshrc
# cshrc resource file
source /central/modules/default/init/csh
...
There are separate initialization scripts available for bash, csh, ksh, perl, python, sh, tcsh, and zsh.
To load a module, simply issue the command:
% module load name_of_module_to_load
Note: You can also add module load commands to your shell .rc file so that a default set of modules gets loaded everytime that you login.
To unload the module:
% module unload name_of_module_to_unload
For a listing of available modules type module avail.
To see what a module is doing when it gets loaded you can use the show command. As an example, consider the output for the mpich-1.2.6 package:
Hint: You can add your own custom module files by creating ~/.modulefiles and putting the custom module definitions there. For help on writing module file definitions look at the modules homepage, or load the modules module:
% module load modules
and read the manpages:
% man module
% man modulefile
Interactive work
There are three dual-nodes for interactive work, one of it especially for profiling purposes (fauia59). These nodes are
intended for compilation and short benchmark runs. For long running jobs, please use the queueing system. In case of abuse,
jobs will be terminated without warning.
Disk space is limited by the quota-tools. Type
quota -vs
to see your current status. All users, who have an account
at LSS, can access the home-directory on their local machine.
For those users, access from
the cluster to the local machines is possible, too (/lsshome). All other users will have ro use
scp to copy data to the cluster. Since only fauia50 is visible, please use this machine in
your statement (/home is NFS-mounted on all nodes)
scp myStuff <login>@fauia50.informatik.uni-erlangen.de
In addition to common software, an installation of the module utils provides easy access to different compilers and
MPI-implementations. Use the command
module avail
to receive a list of all available modules. In order to load a certain module, type
module load <module-name>
After that, you will be able to use the specified software (see section Environment).
To make use of MPI in connection with Infiniband, the module scali has to be loaded.
After compiling, the command mpirun starts the program like any other MPI-job.
mpirun -np 2 -machinefile mfile ./a.out
Your machine file mfile should look like this:
fauia60
fauia60
fauia61
fauia61
In order to use more CPUs, please refer to the batch system. Again, long running jobs with too many CPUs will be killed on
the interactive nodes without warning.
Batch-System
All jobs with moderate or high computation times have to be submitted to the batch system. A ssh-key has to be generated before
the batch system can be used properly. The batch system is able to handle serial and parallel jobs.
Generation of ssh-key
Before using the batch system, you should create a ssh-key on the cluster with an empty passphrase to avoid problems
with MPI. The cluster home is different from your LSS-home!
ssh-keygen -t dsa -b 1024- Answer questions, enter no passphrase
cd ~/.sshcat id_dsa.pub >> authorized_keys
Usage
Jobs can be submitted from fauia60 and fauia61. For that purpose an initial
module load pbs
and job script is neccessary, in which
all requirements of the job are specified (see Serial Jobs, Parallel Jobs
for examples). Thereafter, the script is submitted to the queueing system by the command qsub:
qsub <NameOfScript>
The qualifier of the job is returned by the queueing system. In order to see all queued jobs, the command
qstat -a
can be used. Queued jobs may also be deleted by the user who submitted the job. In this case the first number of the
job identifier has to be used:
qdel <NumberOfjobIdentifier>
The following screenshot shows an example.
There are 3 queues configured at the moment. If no queue is specified, the job will be sent to the serial queue.
| | serial-Queue | parallel-Queue | lss-Queue |
| access | all | all | restricted |
| priority | normal | normal | high |
| default run time | 2 h | 2 h | 2 h |
| no. of CPUs per job | 1 | 16 | 32 |
| no. of running jobs | 1 | 4 | unlimited |
The cluster can be used for serial and parallel jobs. However, due to the configuration of the cluster, jobs
with a moderate number of CPUs and high communication effort are most suitable. Users with different requirements
should refer to the local computing center
(www.rrze.uni-erlangen.de/dienste/arbeiten-rechnen/hpc/).
Serial Jobs
A sample job script might look like this:
#!/bin/sh
#PBS -l nodes=1:ppn=1
#PBS -l walltime=01:00:00
#PBS -q serial
#PBS -M x@y -m abe
. /central/modules/default/init/bash
export FOO=bar
module load XXX
cd /homes/<staff|stud|guests>/<login>/...
./a.out
The number of nodes and processors per nodes is set to 1. After 1 hour of wall clock time, the job will be terminated
by the queueing system. The default is 2 hours. Notifcation by mail at start, finish or abort of the job will be sent to
address x@y. All essential environment variables have to be set before the executable is started. Especially
soucing the module init command is important in order to be able to use the module command in batch scripts.
Parallel Jobs
OpenMP
OpenMP can be used on a single shared memory node only. For such jobs, the number of processors per nodes should be
equal to the number of OpenMP threads used. For example:
#!/bin/sh
#PBS -l nodes=1:ppn=4
#PBS -l walltime=01:00:00
#PBS -q parallel
#PBS -M x@y -m abe
. /central/modules/default/init/bash
export FOO=bar
export OMP_NUM_THREADS=4
module load XXX
cd /homes/<staff|stud|guests>/<login>/...
./a.out
Execpt of setting all needed OpenMP variables, no different statements are neccessary compared to serial jobs.
MPI
In case of MPI jobs, the product of number of nodes and processors per node (max. 4) returns the number of
MPI processes to use in -np option. For example:
#!/bin/sh
#
#PBS -l nodes=2:ppn=4
#PBS -q parallel
export FOO=bar
. /central/modules/default/init/bash
module load scali
module load XXX
cd /homes/<staff|stud|guests>/<login>/...
mpirun -np 8 -machinefile $PBS_NODEFILE ./a.out
The variable $PBS_NODEFILE represents all a suitable machine file for the number of CPU's chosen.
MPI2
When using MPI2, we have to take care of a daemon neccessary to run the job. The job script should look like this:
#!/bin/sh
#
#PBS -l nodes=2:ppn=4
#PBS -q parallel
export FOO=bar
. /central/modules/default/init/bash
module load mpich2
module load XXX
mpdboot --verbose --totalnum=8 --file=$PBS_NODEFILE
sleep 5
cd /homes/<staff|stud|guests>/<login>/...
mpirun -machinefile $PBS_NODEFILE -np 8 ./a.out
mpdallexit
Please note the order of the command options of the mpirun command.
Documentation
Further information can be found here:
- Paralleles Rechnen
- Hardware
- Queueing-System
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