Minutes for the ITC-Research Computing Management Meeting
October 29, 2007 at 10:30 AM
2015 Ivy Road, 1st Floor Conference Room

Members: Alice, Hamp, Jim, Joe S., Mark, Mike, Robin, Terry, Tim S., Tom, Tim T.

Attending: Alice, Hamp, Joe S., Mark, Terry, Tim S., Tim T.
Chair: Tim T. Recorder: Alice Howard

Note: (Italics indicate agenda item; normal font, the meeting notes.)

I. Connection Question: What is a hope or fear (doubt) for this committee?

II. Corrections to minutes from last meeting on October 5, 2007? None.

(Click to review the agenda from this meeting)

III. Old Business:

• Time for our next "condo cluster" planning - what, when, policies about procurement.
  Current web site: http://itc.virginia.edu/research/itc-clusters/
• Agreed at October 5 meeting that would offer dedicated nodes (with 80% rule).
• After discussion about the pros/cons of pre-emptive queuing, we decided to keep it simple and just give users dedicated nodes (with 80% rule).
• Hamp asked how much we have to spend on research computing this year (probably ~$100,000 from the equipment replacement budget).
• Tim S. asked how loaded our current clusters are: Cedar and Dogwood are running something all the time – while Elder is not getting a lot of use.
• Ed & Katherine will do review of other institutions queuing and cluster purchase programs in preparation for public forum on queuing policies.
• Katherine has gathered some information while at BioMed HPC Conference in Boston.
• Katherine's 2006 proposal PBS Service Units Proposal
• Decided to get more background information – and to go back to the ITRTF report and look at what the other institutions cited there are doing.
• Linux Clusters: Cedar, Dogwood Elder- any issues, concerns or upcoming updates/changes?
• Cluster upgrades on hold waiting for next version of ROCKS release – no news on when this release might be.
• VT-UVa IT Collaboration:
• HPC Bootcamp January 7-11(during J term, but not a J term course): start advertising to UVa only – and maybe open the enrollment up later – with a 40 person cap on enrollment. Doing this one ourselves – but will collaborate with VaTech on the summer HPC Bootcamp.
• Have been asked to give a Unix Basics course (including shell scripting) prior to the January HPC Bootcamp.
• Retiring solaris.license. Update: last of flex licenses expires on 10/31/07 so there will be no use of solaris.license by 11/01/07 and the flex license managers will be moved by the end of the week.
• CSAC request to Tom for report on current cluster use vis-a-vis PBS queue use/analysis.
• Reviewed the data from Tom on cluster usage of UVa HPC bootcamp attendees – but still do not know what is typical and what is extreme with respect to wait times and execution times on our clusters.

IV. New Business:

• Katherine’s email of October 18 about PBS Pro 8.0 not supporting "-l nodes:ppn syntax" and suggestion to downgrade Elder to version 7.0.
• For the short-term, downgrade to version 7.0.
• A bigger question is: are we staying with PBSPro? Or should we look at Maui (which uses Open PBS)? This impacts users and how we could/would do queues – so need to look at this question before we roll out another cluster.
• Nominations for chair of this committee?
• Tom Spraggins – Tim T. will talk to him about a transition in January ’08. Could also use this as an opportunity to revisit the purpose of this group (i.e. is it a Big-picture & Policy group? A Nitty-Gritty operational group? Etc.) -- and who should attend the meetings. Are we missing outside perspective – should we have more forums?
• Operating Agreements: notification of attending? Start and end on time? Stick with same time? Others?
• Any news, information from E-School? SURA? CSAC brownbags? UCIT? Other organizations?
• Mitch gather group to consider feasibility of computational science center on fourth floor of new ITE building.
• Decided to have next meeting on Friday 11/30 at 10:30.
• Any other Items?
• Completion and review promises and requests from this meeting.

V. Adjourn by 11:45 and next meeting

• Next Scheduled Meeting of ITC ResComp Standing Committee: Friday, November 30th, 10:30 AM in ITC-2015 Ivy Road, Room #102 (First Floor Conference Room)!
  
  Please send suggestions, additions, corrections to: Tim Tolson or Alice Howard

NOTE: (italics indicate agenda item, regular text the meeting notes.)

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