system installed. The candidate system has the advantage that many nodes can be turned on at the same time and that you can later decide from the comfort of your office on the type of each node.
An important part of a cluster software is the scheduler, which manages the assignment of the resources and the execution of the job on the various nodes. LUCI4HPC comes with a fully integrated job scheduler, which also is configurable via the Web-based control panel.
The control panel uses HTTPS, and you can log in with the user name and password of the user that has the user ID 1000. It is, therefore, very easy and convenient to change the login credentials—just change the
credentials of that user on the head node. After login, you’ll see a cluster overview on the first page. Figure 2 shows a screenshot of this overview.
This overview features the friendly computer icon called Clusterboy, which shows a thumbs up if
everything is working properly and a thumbs down if there is a problem within the cluster, such as a failed node. This allows you to assess the status of the cluster immediately.
Furthermore, the overview shows how many nodes of each type are in the cluster, how many of them are operational and installed, as well as the total and currently used amount of CPUs, GPUs and memory. The information on the currently used amount of resources is directly taken Figure 2. LUCI4HPC Web-Based Control Panel, Cluster Overview Page
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from the scheduler.
The navigation menu on the right-hand side of the control panel is used to access the different pages.
The management page shows a list of all nodes with their corresponding MAC and IP addresses as well as the hostname separated into categories depending on their type. The top category shows the nodes that are marked as down, which means that they have not sent a heartbeat in the last two minutes. Click on the
“details” link next to a node to access the configuration page. The uptime and the load as well as the used and total amount of resources are listed there. Additionally,
some configuration options can be changed, such as the hostname, the IP address and the type of the node, and it also can be marked for re-installation. Changing the IP address requires a reboot of the node in order to take effect, which is not done automatically.
The scheduler page displays a list of all current jobs in the cluster, as well as whether they are running or queuing. Here you have the option of deleting jobs.
The queue tab allows you to define new queues. Nodes can be added to a queue very easily. Click on the
“details” link next to a queue to get a
list of nodes assigned to it as well as a list of currently unassigned nodes.
Unassigned nodes can be assigned to a queue, and nodes assigned to a queue can be removed from it to become an unassigned node.
Additionally, a queue can have a fair use limit; it can be restricted to a specific group ID, and you can choose between three different scheduling methods. These methods are “fill”, which fills up the nodes one after another; “spread”, which assigns a new job to the least-used node and thus performs a simple load balancing;
and finally, “full”, which assigns a job to an empty node. This method is used when several jobs cannot coexist on the same node.
4HERE ALSO IS A 6)0 SYSTEM 4HIS system gives temporary priority access to a user when, for example, A DEADLINE HAS TO BE MET 6)0 USERS always are on the top of the queue, and their job is executed as soon as the necessary resources become available. Normally, the scheduler assigns a weight to each job based on the amount of requested resources and the submission time. This weight determines the queuing order.
Finally, the options page allows you to change configuration options of the cluster system, determined during the installation. In general, everything
that can be done in the control panel also can be done by modifying the configuration scripts and issuing a reload command.
With the current beta version, a few tasks cannot be done with the control panel. These include adding new users and packages as well as customizing the installation scripts.
In order to add a user to the cluster, add the user to the head node as you normally would add a user under
Linux. Issue a reload command to the nodes via the LUCI4HPC command-line tool, and then the nodes will synchronize the user and group files from the head node. Thus, the user becomes known to the entire cluster.
Installing new packages on the nodes is equally easy. As the current version supports Ubuntu Linux, it also supports the Ubuntu package management system. In order to install a package on all nodes as well as all future nodes, a package name is
added to the additional_packages file in the LUCI4HPC configuration folder.
During the startup or installation process, or after a reload command, the nodes install all packages listed in this file automatically.
The installation process of
LUCI4HPC is handled with a preseed file for the Ubuntu installer as well as pre- and post-installation shell scripts.
These shell scripts, as well as the preseed file, are customizable. They
support so-called LUCI4HPC variables defined by a #. The variables allow the scripts to access the cluster options, such as the IP of the head node or the IP and hostname of the node where the script is executed. Therefore, it is possible to write a generic script that uses the IP address of the node it runs on through these variables without defining it for each node separately.
There are special installation
scripts for GPU and InfiniBand drivers that are executed only when the