1. Cumulus - dynamic cluster available under Clusterix
Marcin Pawlik,
Jan Kwiatkowski,
Roman Wyrzykowski,
Konrad Karczewski
Research supported by:
Clusterix - National Cluster of Linux Systems &
European Framework Programme 6 project DeDiSys

2. Presentation outline Work motivation Potential solutions
Dynamic cluster creation
Clusterix integration
Achievements and future work
Questions

3. Work motivation
Build a cluster for research and educational purposes.
Extend the cluster functionality by joining the Clusterix environment.

4. Requirements
Cost effective – utilizes existing hardware infrastructure
Not invasive – no large modifications to the existing infrastructure needed
Cohabitative – no degeneration of the existing functionality
Useful – meets our scientific and educational requirements

5. Potential solutions first approach – cpu cycle harvester
Easy to deploy – one program installed and the system is ready
Cohabitative – operates when the machine is idle
Invasive – every modification has to change the software on all the nodes
Uncontrollable –no guarantees of cpu time, network bandwidth, etc.

6. Potential solutions second approach – dynamic cluster
Fully controllable – the nodes are fully dedicated to the cluster
Not invasive – modifications only in the ”cluster space”
Cohabitative – operates when the machines are not utilized
Not fully available – works only part-time

7. Implementation Assumptions Features network boot
remotely mounted file systems
optional local swap and scratch space
Features
easy to control and modify
higher server load

8. Software architecture
TFTP
DHCP b k i
Server
Node1
Cluster
oneSIS
DHCP i
DHCP i
Node2
NFS
Node3

9. Joining Clusterix Advantages Access to a nation-wide Grid environment
Potential future access to worldwide resources
Higher computational power
Higher availability

10. Clusterix integration
Cumulus j
JIMS
Cluster
/home/vus0 GT j
VUS
GRMS j
Clusterix GT
JIMS
VOIS

11. Summary
Creation of the fully functional cluster at the expense of one dedicated computer
Extended power and availability - participation in the National Cluster of Linux Systems
Future work
Evaluation of the cluster-wide suspend mechanism
Cluster performance evaluation
Upgrade of the network infrastructure
Incorporation of more computational nodes …

12. Questions

13. Requirements Globus Toolkit Myproxy Monitoring system (JIMS)
Virtual user account system (VUS)
Host and User certificates

14. Installed software System Cluster oneSIS DHCP NFS TFTP …
Resource manager (TORQUE)
Parallel processing environments (MPICH, PVM)