Browsing by Author "Coulter, Eric A."

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    XCBC & XNIT using the LittleFe and Limulus HPC200
    (2015-07-27) Fischer, Jeremy; Coulter, Eric A.; Hallock, Barbara; Knepper, Richard
    For this tutorial, we wish to demonstrate building practical XSEDE Compatible Basic Clusters (XCBC) while showing that an XCBC need not be an expensive resource to be useful. One secondary goal is showing the basic process of installing Rocks on a â bare metalâ system from start to finish, ultimately running a basic multi node job that will demonstrate the abilities of such a system. The next secondary goal is to show using Yum and RPMs developed by XSEDE to create an XCBC. Also, we want to demonstrate the value of using a small local cluster to pilot and prototype research in order to better prepare for requesting allocations on national XSEDE resources. An additional goal is to inspire those that may have limited system administration resources and/or limited budgets into finding ways to develop clusters to meet their needs for experimentation or for smaller research jobs that might not otherwise get time on XSEDE systems. Lastly, we will cover the basics of management for small clusters, getting started and managing users effectively.
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    XCBC and XNIT - tools for cluster implementation and management in research and training
    (2015-08-17) Fischer, Jeremy; Knepper, Richard; Coulter, Eric A.; Peck, Charles; Stewart, Craig A.
    The Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment has created a suite of software designed to facilitate the local management of computer clusters for scientific research and integration of such clusters with the US open research national cyberinfrastructure. This suite of software is distributed in two ways. One distribution is called the XSEDE-compatible basic cluster (XCBC), a Rocks Roll that does an “all at once, from scratch” installation of core components. The other distribution is called the XSEDE National Integration Toolkit (XNIT), so that specific tools can be downloaded and installed in portions as appropriate on existing clusters. In this paper, we describe the software included in XCBC and XNIT, and examine the use of XCBC installed on the LittleFe cluster design created by the Earlham College Cluster Computing Group as a teaching tool to show the deployment of XCBC from Rocks. In addition, the demonstration of the commercial Limulus HPC200 Deskside Cluster solution is shown as a viable, off-the-shelf cluster that can be adapted to become an XSEDE-like cluster through the use of the XNIT repository. We demonstrate that both approaches to cluster management – use of SCBC to build clusters from scratch and use of XNIT to expand capabilities of existing clusters – aid cluster administrators in administering clusters that are valuable locally and facilitate integration and interoperability of campus clusters with national cyberinfrastructure. We also demonstrate that very economical clusters can be useful tools in education and research.