Minutes for the ITC-Research Computing Standing Committee Meeting

March 4, 2005 at 9:00AM

(in ITC-2015 Ivy Road, Room 102)

Re-scheduled from February 28 meeting that got snowed out...

Members: Alice, Bill, Dawn, Ed, Hamp, Kathy G., Katherine H., Jim, Mark S.., Martha, Robin, Sue Ellen, Steve, Terry, Tim S., Joe S., Tom S.

Attending: Alice, Bill, Dawn, Ed, Kathy G., Katherine H., Jim, Mark S., Martha, Robin, Tim S., Joe S., Tom S.

Chair: Tim T. Recorder: Alice Howard

I. Corrections to minutes from last meeting on November 29, 2004? None.

Click here to see the agenda from this meeting.

II. Ongoing Discussion Topics:

1. Cluster projects:

· “Condo” Cluster: 126 nodes, Dual CPU Opteron’s (1.8 Ghz) 2MB memory, 80GB hard drive. Will have its own disk storage array as new ones with birch and aspen. Will operate as 32-bit cluster for at least first year.

o Ordering four additional nodes to use at test cluster for 64-bit operation and hot spares.

o Have four researchers participating: Leo Zhigilei (lz2n) – 8 nodes w/ ETF $; Jeff Shabanowitz/Dina Bai (Chemistry)- 8 nodes; Phil Parrish/Rich Gregory – 4 nodes; Matt Neurock – 4 to 8 nodes not certain yet. Promised we’d have it in user-production mode by end of March.

o Order went out on 2/28/05, but do not have the ship dates yet. Will need to adjust users’ expectations that it won’t be in user-production mode until maybe in early May.

o Teak Cluster:

§ It is set to go.

o Oak Cluster: one V210 will be front-end, rest nodes, named oak1.itc,oak2.itc, etc.

§ Set up in timesharing mode? Sounds fine.

§ What to do with existing 6 netras that are orange1-6? Hamp has plans to reallocate these to replace even older hardware.

o Aspen & Birch cluster upgrade to 2.6 kernel. Timeline dependent on ROCKS upgrade.

§ The beta version of the ROCKS upgrade could be coming soon (this month).

2. /longtmp additional disk space from Library available yet?

· Will check with Hamp – possibly available after Spring Break.

· Script to automate checking usage and reminding users.

3. Proposal for Linux cluster support as ‘for-fee’ service.

· In progress.

· Need guidelines for how to handle support for researchers who don't purchase cluster support but expect assistance and guidance from ITC for their cluster.

4. Linux license server, "linux.license.virginia.edu".

· Close to coming up, but not ready for prime-time yet.

· What software products license will be served from it? Katherine will talk to Hamp about some ANSYS issues.

5. Computer Sciences “grid clustering” proposal headed by Andrew Grimshaw. He can come any Monday around 11:15 AM. We will invite him to the March 28 management meeting (with all welcome to attend) to hear what he’s doing with this project.

III. New Business:

6. Move of remaining FlexLM / other license managers from jeeves.itc to appropriate xxx.license.virginia.edu

· Already moved S-PLUS, Matlab Classroom, TotalView, & IMSL to aix.license.virginia.edu, right?

· Moved to linux.license? And moved to solaris.license?

· Need input from Hamp.

7. Scalapak doesn’t work on Aspen and Birch. Need to install newest version of Intel compiler (8.1?) in order for Scalapak to work. Have researchers who need.

· Bill will install the newest version of the Intel compilers and Katherine will test.

8. blue.unix upgrade of nodes to new 64-bit nodes and new version of OS. ITC-Transitions CDP is tracking as well. Testing plan and timeline?

· Need rack space and put AIX 5.3 on holmes first – maybe this summer.

9. Timeline and priority order of all these equipment rollouts (oak,blue.unix,longtmp disks, condo cluster, linux.license, etc.).

· Tim will email Hamp about the timelines and sequence for these equipment rollouts.

10. The Home Directory access from a Windows machine is going to be changed to use the Eservice encrypted passwords in about a month – need some publicity – will include this in the Research Newsletter. Also planning to cleanup weak passwords on the CMS and blue.unix.

Next Scheduled Meeting of this group: Monday, April 25th, 10:30 AM in ITC-2015 Ivy Road, Room #102.

Next Scheduled Meeting of ITC ResComp Management team: Monday, March 28th, 10:30 AM in ITC-2015 Ivy Road, Room #220.

Go to: ITC Research Computing Standing Committee Home Page