Date: Thu, 5 Dec 2002 06:55:25 -0800 (PST) From: kris stewart To: cs575@rohan.sdsu.edu Hello Computing Enthusiasts in CS 575 Supercomputing, We have an excellent opportunity to attend a talk at SDSC Thur 19dec02 6:30pm that is being sponsored by the San Diego ACM Chapter. This will be a great way to get to "see" the machines and some facilities of SDSC and to hear a terrific talk. Hope you can join me (and fellow CS faculty and your own Student ACM club members). kris stewart --------------------------------------------------------------------- Details below: >From San Diego Association for Computing Machinery (http://www.sdacm.org/) ------------------- LEARN ABOUT BUILDING COMPUTING CLUSTERS AT THE SAN DIEGO SUPERCOMPUTER CENTER Thursday, December 19 6:30 P.M. - 8:00 P.M. Join your colleagues at the next meeting of The San Diego Chapter of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), featuring Philip Papadopoulos of San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) talking about building and managing computing clusters with Kickstart and XML using the NPACI Rocks Clustering Toolkit. We will meet at 6:30PM at the San Diego Supercomputer Center on the UC San Diego campus. The meeting cost is $3 (free to members) and is open to the public. For more information, call (858) 452-8701 or visit www.sdacm.org. We are extremely pleased to have SDSC's assistance for this event, and very excited to have Mr. Papadopoulos speaking. Bring your colleagues and friends to this don't-miss event -- we hope to see you there! To RSVP, reply to this e-mail or call (858) 452-8701. Please RSVP by Dec 18. High-performance compute clusters are becoming commonplace in the world of scientific computing. These distributed memory machines (coupled by a high-performance/gigabit-class network) are built from commodity components with a copy of the operating system on every node in a cluster. One of the clear problems with this construction is version and configuration skew of installed OS software across a large cluster. Without effective techniques and software, small differences in node configuration translate to overall system instability. Furthermore, as clusters increase in size, nodes often need to take on specialized functions like pure compute, file serving, web serving, and compilation/job launch. Ideally, one would like to have a methodology that captures both the basic configuration common to all nodes as well as the specialized extensions. Standard practice in the commodity cluster world is to build a model compute node that is essentially hand-crafted by a skilled administrator. Once built, a bit-image of the installation is taken and then this image is replicated across nodes. Norton Ghost and PowerQuest DriveImage are commercial examples of this methodology. SystemImager represents the same design in the open-source Linux space. These methods require substantial hardware similarity among imaged nodes to work properly, and this represents a major drawback to this structure. In the NPACI Rocks Toolkit, we take a descriptive approach to defining the configuration and functionality of node. Instead of building a model node, we build text-based descriptions of the functionality needed. In this way, we are able to replicate complete configurations without resorting to monolithic bit images. Also, configurations can be agnostic to specific hardware configurations. Finally, our methods allow different node types to share configuration information, allowing the user to define an inheritable common software core. The Rocks Toolkit uses Red Hat's Kickstart facility as the descriptive mechanism. On top of Kickstart, we provide a programmatic and graph method to describing the OS contents of a node. We start by using XML descriptions to create generic blocks of functionality (software packages + configuration). These descriptions (there 80+ descriptive files in the standard Rocks distribution) are then assembled into different complete nodes (appliances) using a directed acyclic graph. When two node types (e.g., file server and compute node) need to share configuration information (compilers, ssh, ...) both entries will point to the same set of nodes that describe the shared functionality. The complete description of a node (XML files + graph) are used to dynamically generate a Kickstart description for a particular node. In this talk, we will overview the Rocks toolkit and specifically detail this configuration mechanism. A critical message of Rocks is that an OS image is disposable and reconfiguration or complete reinstallation should be extremely efficient. Rocks has been successfully deployed on approximately 100 clusters with the largest instance being 128 nodes. About Philip M. Papadopoulos Philip Papadopoulos received his PhD in electrical and computer engineering from the University of California, Santa Barbara. His focus was on scalable numerical methods for matrix-valued equations in control. In 1993, Dr. Papadopoulos moved to Oak Ridge National Laboratory and was a member of the Parallel Virtual Machine (PVM) design and implementation team. In 1998, Philip joined the computer science department at UC San Diego working with Prof. Andrew Chien on high-performance clusters based on the Windows NT operating system. In 1999, Dr. Papadopoulos joined the San Diego Supercomputer Center to lead their Linux cluster development group. Dr. Papadopoulos is currently the Program Director for Grid and Cluster Computing at the San Diego Supercomputer Center. MEETING CHARGE: The meeting will cost $3, payable at the door -- members get in free. (You can save approximately 50% by purchasing an SDACM Membership at the door for only $10. See www.sdacm.org for more details.) DIRECTIONS: Take Interstate 5, exit Genesee Ave, and turn West from the exit. At the top of the hill, turn left at North Torrey Pines Road. At the first light, turn left on Northpoint Drive into UCSD. Follow Northpoint Drive to the campus Information Booth. Visitors must purchase a parking permit at the Information Booth ($2). Please place parking permit on your dashboard in full view. Park in lots 305 or 351 (see http://www.sdsc.edu/Visitors/Images/SDSC-MAP.JPG). From lot 305, walk up hill to pedestrian walkway you will be facing the Social Sciences building, turn left on the walkway, take the first down walkway on your right past Social Sciences, this will lead you to SDSC lobby entrance. From lot 351, walk south on the pedestrian walkway, which is located just east of the lot, past the RIMAC Arena, take the next down walkway on your left, this will lead you to SDSC lobby. To drop off visitors only or for handicapped spaces, continue west past the Information Booth and follow Hopkins Drive as it turns south. Pass RIMAC Arena complex (first building on right). SDSC is just beyond; turn right into second driveway. For a map: http://makeashorterlink.com/?N163533A2 For customized directions: http://makeashorterlink.com/?D193213A2