Using NIEeS Cluster

From GridInfo

March 30, 2006

National Institute for Environmental e-Science University of Cambridge

Contents 1 About this document 2 Requirements for users 3 How to obtain an account 4 Resource information 4.1 Summary 4.1.1 General GNU tools installed on the badgers 4.1.2 Grid Software installed on the badgers 5 Resource utilization policy 5.1 Resource Reservation 5.2 Installation of additional software 6 Support staff

About this document

The National Institute for Environmental e-Science (NIEeS) is contributing a cluster system to the University of Cambridge campus grid (Camgrid) and Environmental Science community. This document is a users' guide for Environmental Science Applications and Grid Middleware Assembly resources and includes:

1. requirements for users
2. procedures for getting an account
3. hardware specifications and available Grid software
4. resource utilization policy
5. support staff available and mailing lists provided to users

According to future administrative decisions, NIEeS may modify this document.

Requirements for users

NIEeS requests all users to fulfill the following conditions.

1. Users should belong to an organization involved in environmental science.
2. All users participating in NIEeS should comply with the operating principles of NIEeS.
3. Participants in Camgrid must comply with the operating principles of Camgrid.
4. All users must have a user certificate issued by a NIEeS/Camgrid trusted CA.

NIEeS trusts the following CAs: NIEeS, UK e-Science.

Procedures for obtaining a user certificate will be available on the NIEeS home page.

How to obtain an account

In order to obtain an account for using NIEeS resources, send the following information to system admin.

1. Full Name
2. Affiliation
3. Address
4. Country
5. Phone and facsimile number
6. Email address
7. Purpose for using NIEeS resources
8. Contribution to NIEeS and/or Camgrid
9. Desired account name (1st: 2nd : 3rd choices:)
10. Shell (bash, csh, tcsh, etc.)
11. ssh public key (see notes a,b)

User certificates should be issued by a NIEeS/Camgrid Trusted CA. (see notes b,c).

The application will be reviewed within a few days of receipt by the administrators of NIEeS resources. The administrators will verify whether the applicant fulfills the requirements described above. If the application is approved, NIEeS will create an account and send the necessary information to the applicant. Otherwise, the applicant will be notified that the request is rejected. Basically, a newly created account will be valid until the end of the year. You are expected to move your files from NIEeS resources to your resources by the expiration of your account. If you want to keep your account and files, you are required to renew your account every year. NIEeS will remind all users to renew accounts and inform them of the procedures required when the expiration date gets close.

Notes:

a. You can login to NIEeS resources via an ssh command using RSA authentication. NIEeS will NOT inform you of your initial UNIX password.

b. An ssh public key and your user certificate should be sent as attachments to your application.

c. A mapping of your subject name to your local account will be added to the grid-mapfile on the NIEeS resources.

Resource information

NIEeS provides a Linux cluster with a head node and 12 client nodes. Each node has 2 Xeon 3.2 GHz processors and 4GB RAM, and interconnection between the nodes is via giga-bit ethernet.

The Globus gatekeeper is running on User Service Nodes and computing nodes can be utilized via the Globus jobmanager (jobmanager-condor).

Summary

cete

cete is available to users and projects approved by NIEeS resources group.

User Service Node

cete.niees.group.cam.ac.uk

Computing Nodes

badger1--niees--group to badger12--niees--group (more could be added).

The operating systems used on the badgers are Debian, and Fedora.

General GNU tools installed on the badgers

1. GCC version 3.4

Grid Software installed on the badgers

1. Globus Toolkit 4.0.1
2. GLOBUS_LOCATION = /usr/local/globus
3. MDS is not running at this moment
4. jobmanager-condor is available on User Service Nodes (cete)
5. Globus Packaging Toolkit 3.0.1
6. GPT_LOCATION = /usr/local/globus
7. Condor 6.6.10
8. CONDOR_LOCATION=/usr/local/condor/
9. Condor-submit and other tools are available on cete
10. OMII and GridSAM at agorilla
11. OMII Server=/usr/local/OMII/
12. OMII Client=/usr/local/omiiclient/
13. SRB Server=/usr/local/srb

Resource utilization policy

Resource Reservation

The cluster is intended to be used for development and testing of Grid middleware and Grid applications in NIEeS.

Please send your application to NIEeS system admin. The application should indicate:

1. Your name
2. Your account
3. Number of CPUs/nodes which you would like to occupy
4. the start time / end time (time zone must be indicated)

(you are allowed to occupy, at most, 24 hours for benchmarking)

1. the purpose of the experiments

NIEeS will provide the dedicated resources during the specified (or permitted) period. Other users will not be able to use (login to) the dedicated resources during the period.

Installation of additional software

NIEeS clusters can be used for R&D of Grid middleware and applications. You can install, test and evaluate your software on NIEeS clusters. Since NIEeS clusters are shared by many users, you are requested to test and debug your software thoroughly before installing it on NIEeS clusters so that it will not damage the systems. If you need supervisor privilege for installing your software, please contact the system admin.

Support staff

NIEeS clusters are maintained by support staff. Your requests will be processed in a best-effort manner by the staff.