CHIPP Phoenix Cluster Workshop June 11,th 2006, CSCS

Tier2 Status

• A second 'Schulleitungssitzung' needs to be had, since the cooling infrastructure installation is not secured yet in terms of funding. Our proposal was evaluated positively, and we don't have to do anything new again.
• Original cluster (old) and new cluster are working 'as one'. The nodes are not identical, but the software doesn't cares. The nodes are managed by cfengine. The hardware is reasonably reliable. Tom: 'it's not a complicated installation'.
• ZFS is resilient with the machines we have so far.
• Personnel at CSCS: August will be difficult, and until new person comes we have to 'scratch' the resources together. There are 2FTEs available for the Phoenix cluster.

Tier3 Status

Geneva

• 26TB, 108cores in workers and login PCs
• atlas-ui01..03, grid00 and grid02 have 'double identities' - are also part of CERN network
• NorduGrid as scheduler
• Runs mostly ATLAS MC
• Higher priority for Swiss Atlas members
• Corrupted X4500 now because of a crash.
• Plan for new system in Autumn - 2 more Thumpers and more cores (176)
• System may be used also for other local activities (Neutrino expts)
• Assumptions may not apply in future! as data volumes will increase significantly from MC to Production (Factor 200)

Questions:

• CERN Link? Why?
  • Idea is to have data directly from CERN more efficiently. (ui usage, AFS)
  • The computing model does not foresee it, that has to work as well of course but want to make use of physical locality too

Advice:

• Run X4500 with Solaris not SLC4, which crashes consistently with software raid.

Bern

• Dedicated cluster, 36 cores, 10TB. SLC4/SuSE
• UBELIX cluster from informatics department, 506 cores (shared), Gentoo
• Plans - next year for 50cores and ~40TB space
• ARC/Torque/NFS has scaling problems

Questions:

• AFS? No
• Grow in size after 2008? Not necessarily
• How do you mount? NFS-based or scp based (two kinds in ARC)

Zurich - LHCb

Experiment Status

ATLAS

• 2 Clusters in Geneva
• 1 Cluster in Bern
• Tier2 Phoenix

• Geneva
  • Using NG in Geneva
  • .xrsl job descriptions in nordugrid
  • Grid Pilot, Ganga, pathena - did not try them all yet

-- PeterKunszt - 11 Jun 2007