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SPCM - Simple, Portable Cluster ManagerThe SPCM cluster manager is a free, open source integrated tool set for managing a simple HPC (High Performance Computing) cluster. It is the only portable cluster management suite we are aware of and is designed to be easily adapted to most POSIX platforms. SPCM automates the process of configuring a head node, compute nodes, file servers, and visualization nodes. Most common management tasks can be performed using a simple menu interface, while additional tasks are supported by command-line tools. SPCM automatically installs and integrates the SLURM scheduler and the Ganglia web-based network monitoring suite with the Apache web server. StatusSPCM is currently alpha-quality with a moratorium on major new features until the existing code reaches a high level of cleanliness and robustness. Only a few new features, such as integrating parallel file systems, are planned for the more distant future. SPCM was developed over many years as a tool to manage production HPC clusters at the University of Wisconsin -- Milwaukee. While the code still needs some cleanup and redesign, most of it is fairly evolved and stable. Efforts for the foreseeable future will focus on refactoring and improving the user interface. Screen ShotsSPCM main menu: ![]() Landing page of a small cluster built with SPCM: ![]() Ganglia on a small cluster built with SPCM: ![]() Design PhilosophyThe design philosophy centers on simplicity and performance. These ideals are achieved in-part by minimizing interdependence of cluster nodes. Each compute node contains a fully independent operating system installation and critical software installations on its own local storage. Compared with clusters that utilize shared storage more extensively, this strategy increases the initial cluster setup time slightly in exchange for simpler management, less "noise" on the local network, fewer single points of failure, and fewer bottlenecks. Core design principals:
Implementation of this design is facilitated by leveraging the extensive systems management tools provided by the FreeBSD base system, including the ports system which automates the installation of nearly every mainstream open source application in existence. The pkgsrc package manager is used on other platforms. Yum is used for the most basic system services and commercial software support on RHEL/CentOS, with pkgsrc providing SLURM, Apache, and newer versions of many user tools such as editors. The SPCM tools are written almost entirely in POSIX Bourne shell using standard Unix tools to configure the system, and utilizing ports/packages for all software management.
The recommended hardware configuration uses a single network interface on every node, including the head node, and a separate router/gateway. Many network switches have built-in routing capability that can serve this purpose. If you're using a simple switch without routing capability for your cluster, you can use an inexpensive hardware router or quickly and cheaply build a sophisticated firewall router using any PC with two network adapters and pfSense or OPNsense. You'll probably want to disable the DHCP server on the router. Running the DHCP server on the head node instead will facilitate PXE installations on the other nodes using tools integrated into SPCM. It's best to keep the load on the head node as low as possible to ensure good response times for shell sessions and for the scheduler. Hence, the head node should not double as a compute node or as a file server for large amounts of data. We generally house /home on the head node, but with a very small quota (e.g. 250 MiB) and store scientific data on a separate file server. A compute node can also be a file server and this has the advantage that jobs running on that node have direct access to the disks rather than using the network via NFS, Gluster, etc. If you do this, be aware that ZFS by default will consume most or all available RAM, thus competing with computational processes. To prevent performance problems, you can limit ZFS adaptive read cache (ARC) to a few gigabytes and subtract the same amount from RealMemory for that node in your slurm.conf. Currently Supported Platforms: FreeBSD and RHEL/CentOSRedhat Enterprise Linux and it's free twin, CentOS, are the de facto standard operating systems for HPC clusters. They are more stable than bleeding-edge Linux distributions, have strong support for HPC system software like Infiniband drivers, parallel file systems, etc., and are the only POSIX platforms officially supported by most commercial scientific software vendors. The main disadvantages of enterprise Linux platforms (compared to FreeBSD or community Linux distributions such as Debian and Gentoo) are use of outdated kernels and packages available in the Yum repository. (Stability and long-term binary compatibility in enterprise Linux systems is maintained by running older, time-tested, and heavily patched versions of system software.) We've had great success using pkgsrc to manage more up-to-date open source software on RHEL/CentOS. The pkgsrc system is well-supported on Linux, offers far more packages than Yum, and can install a complete set of packages that are almost completely independent from the base Linux installation. FreeBSD's unparalleled reliability, near-optimal efficiency, and easy software management via the FreeBSD ports collection make it an ideal platform for HPC clusters. There is no better platform for running scientific software that requires modern development tools or lengthy uninterrupted up time. FreeBSD is the only operating system we've found that offers enterprise stability and system management features (binary updates, fully-integrated ZFS, etc) combined with top-tier development tools and software management (Clang/LLVM base compiler, FreeBSD ports, etc.). As a case in point, Peregrine, the FreeBSD cluster built for educational use at the University of Wisconsin -- Milwaukee, has never had a compute node crash in 8 years of service. This despite running many intensive jobs. Some head node crashes were experienced early on, but were traced to a Dell PowerEdge firmware bug affecting single-core systems. Since updating the firmware, the head node has not crashed in 7 years. FreeBSD is the basis of many products used in HPC including FreeNAS, Isilon, NetApp, OPNSense, Panasas, and pfSense. Many FreeBSD HPC clusters are in use today, serving science, engineering, and other disciplines. FreeBSD is a supported platform on Amazon's EC2 virtual machine service. It is also a little-known fact that the special effects for the movie "Matrix" were rendered on a FreeBSD cluster. FreeBSD can run most Linux binaries natively (with better performance than Linux in some cases), using its CentOS-based Linux compatibility module. This module is *NOT* an emulation layer. It simple adds Linux system calls to the FreeBSD kernel so that it can run Linux binaries directly. Hence, there is no performance penalty. The only added cost is a small kernel module and modest amount of disk used to house the module and Linux software. Skills Required to Manage an SPCM HPC Cluster
Getting started:
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