1. HEP Computing Status Sheffield University Matt Robinson Paul Hodgson Andrew Beresford

2. Interactive Cluster 30 self built linux boxes AMD Athlon XP cpu’s, 256/512 meg ram OS Scientific Linux 303 100 megabit network Use NIS for authentication, NFS mount /home etc System install using kickstart + post install scripts Separate backup machine 15 Laptops mostly dual boot Some MAC’s and one Windows Box 3 Disk servers mounted as /data1 /data2 etc (few TB)

3. Batch Cluster 100 cpu farm Athlon XP 2400/2800 OS Scientific Linux 303 NFS mounted /home and /data OpenPBS batch system for job submission Gigabit Backbone with 100 MBit to worker nodes Disk server provides 1.3 TB as /data Raid5 Entire cluster assembled in house from OEM components for less than 50k Hard part was finding air-conditioned room with sufficient power

4. Cluster Usage

5. Software PAW, CERNLIB etc Geant4 ROOT Atlas 10.0.1 FLUKA ANSYS, LS-DYNA

6. Comments - Issues Have tightened up security in last year Strict firewall policy, limited machine exemption Blocking scripts prevent ssh access after 3 authentication failures within 1 hour Cheap disks allow construction of large disk arrays Very happy with SL3 for desktop machines Use FC3 for Laptops – 2.6 kernel

7. The Sheffield LCG Cluster

8. Division of Hardware 162 x AMD Opteron 250 (2.4 GHz) 4 GB RAM/box (2 GB/CPU) 72 GB U320 10K RPM local SCSI disk Currently running 32 bit SL303 for maximum compatibility with grid. ~2.5 TB storage for experiments. Middleware: 2.4.0 Probably the most purple cluster in the grid.

9. Looking Sinister

10. Status

11. Usage so far We can take quite a bit more.

12. Monitoring Ganglia with modified webfrontend to present queue information

13. Installation Service nodes connected to VPN and Internet PXE Installation via VPN allows complete control of dhcpd and named RedHat kickstart + post install script ssh servers not exposed RGMA always the hardest part Stumbled across routing rules. WN install takes about 30 minutes, can do up to 40 simultaneously.

14. Future plans Keep up with middleware updates Increase available storage as required in ~3-4 TB steps Fix things that break Try not to mess anything up by screwing around Look toward operating with 64 bit OS. Matt Robinson: