Newsletter – June 2006
OPTIMIZING YOUR COMPUTE RESOURCES
NEWS / ANNOUNCEMENTS
1. Cluster Resources to Open First European Base of Operation in the UK
3. Moab Grid Suite Available for Evaluation at Cluster Resources' Web Site
4. Moab Cluster Software Certified on PSSC Labs' PowerWulf Clusters
5. DID YOU KNOW: mshow -a (show available resources in Moab)
Cluster Resources to Open First European Base of Operations in the UK
Cluster Resources, Inc.TM announced on June 26 the planned opening of a European base of operations in the United Kingdom to provide greater support and services to the European region.
The new office is planned for a Q3 2006 opening at a location currently under negotiation in the United Kingdom. Cluster Resources will make a future announcement on their Web site at http://www.clusterresources.com detailing the specific date and location.
“We are very pleased with the growth our company is experiencing,” said Michael Jackson, President of Cluster Resources. “The UK facility will allow us to continue providing top qualityservice and support, but now with faster response times for organizations based in Europe,the Middle East and Africa, as well as broader coverage for global organizations.”
The UK facility and other unannounced future expansions are due to strong sales of Cluster Resources’ innovative high performance computing management solutions. The continued growth resulted in Cluster Resources’ recent upgrade to their third headquarters location. For 2006, they are experiencing a growth rate estimated to be well over 100 percent from last year and have grown 60 percent to 100 percent every year over the previous three years.
“The time is perfect for an expanded European base of operations,” said Jackson. “We appreciate the customer and partner relationships that have made this possible. The new facilities will allow us to provide added support and services, which will help us continue delivering 90-99 percent utilization for clusters and grids across the world with our Moab products.”
Cluster Resources’ expanded support covers Moab customers, but also provides free support for Moab Cluster Suite® and Moab Grid Suite® evaluators. The UK facility will offer these services as well, assisting sites with their testing of Moab solutions.
Torque 2.1.1 Released
Cluster Resources is pleased to announce the latest release of TORQUE: version 2.1.1. This release contains many enhancements, fixes and new features including additional foundation work allowing support of dynamic jobs and cluster configurations. Further improvements to diagnostics and more intuitive job submission behaviors are now in place. Full details are available at http://www.clusterresources.com/torquechangelog.
In addition to this release, we have also enabled anonymous check-out access for the TORQUE source code. We are using Subversion to manage the repository so community members can now download the most up-to-date code using any SVN compatible tools.
Subversion is well documented and widely used throughout the open source world. (Seehttp://subversion.tigris.org/ for downloads and documentation.) We hope that its use will further increase TORQUE's momentum, stimulate development and empower the community.
Thanks for all your contributions and support.
Moab Grid Suite Available for Evaluation at Cluster Resources' Web Site
An evaluation license of Moab Grid Suite, an advanced metascheduler and grid workload manager, can now be downloaded from Cluster Resources' Web site. Moab Grid Suite intelligently schedules all grid resources to automatically migrate jobs and data to the optimal cluster on the grid, while taking into account all needed variables such as network, political policies, job priorities and more. Moab supports popular resource managers (LSF, PBS Pro, TORQUE, LoadLeveler, SLURM, etc.) and functions with or without Globus. The free evaluation can be found at http://www.clusterresources.com/grideval
One of the largest obstacles to grid computing is the loss of independence that cluster administrators may experience when clusters are grouped into grids. Moab Grid Suite provides tools that allow multiple departments or organizations to share resources while still maintaining cluster autonomy. For example, cluster administrators can set reservations and policies for their own clusters, guaranteeing that end-users at any given cluster will be able to do their work when they need to.
Moab Grid Suite includes advanced features to facilitate managing a grid, such as a graphical interface for system management and reports, and the ability to unify management across heterogeneous clusters (different hardware, operating systems, resource managers, etc.).
Cluster Resources' technical support team will provide free Moab Grid Suite evaluation support to answer any questions regarding installation and management of the grid environment. They can help you evaluate your specific computing needs and environment. Information not found on the Web site can be requested by emailing info@clusterresources.com. Complete Moab Grid Suite product details can be seen at http://www.clusterresources.com/mgs
Moab Cluster Software Certified on PSSC Labs' PowerWulf Clusters
Cluster Resources, Inc.TM announced earlier this month that their Moab Cluster Suite® software passed compatibility tests on PSSC Lab's PowerWulf Linux clusters, offering a seamless solution for optimizing cluster workload management and return on investment.
PSSC Labs' Beowulf Linux clusters, known as PowerWulf, are made to order, offering various options for configuration and capacity. PSSC Labs also provides full hardware and software support free for the life of the cluster. Adding Moab Cluster Suite's intelligent scheduling capability and full tech support to PSSC's custom hardware and software package can increase resource utilization to 90-99 percent through intelligent scheduling based on information generated by the resource manager and various hardware monitors. This creates a highly efficient system designed to optimize performance in any computing environment.
“Our goal is to give our customers the most efficient, easy-to-use and cost-effective supercomputer possible,” said Alex Lesser, PSSC Labs Vice President. “Moab makes our easy-to-use system even easier to manage.”
Moab gives administrators the power to manually change reservations and scheduling priorities as needed from a remote location.
The combination of PowerWulf and Moab provides a fully-supported hardware and software solution to maximize return on investment.
To learn more about PSSC Labs' PowerWulf clusters, or for custom configuration options, go to www.pssclabs.com/products/hpc_clusters.asp. To learn more about Moab Cluster Suite, or for a free evaluation, go to www.clusterresources.com/moab.
To read this article in its entirety, please visit http://www.clusterresources.com/media/Press Releases/Press Release_Final PSSC.pdf.
DID YOU KNOW: mshow -a (show available resources in Moab)
The mshow -a command allows system administrators to run a query of system resources that are or will be available. Users can input job requirements to qualify the query, and Moab will retrieve a list of available times and nodes fitting the requirements.
For example, if you need to run a 15 hour job that requires three nodes you can use mshow -a to have Moab find the next time that three nodes will simultaneously be available for 15 hours. Using the -flags=tid command will assign a transaction ID to the results of the mshow -a query.
Example:
mshow -a -w duration=15:00:00,minprocs=3,os=AIX53,jobfeature=shared --flags=tid,future
Partition Tasks Nodes Duration StartOffset StartDate
------------ --------- --------- ------------- --------------- ---------------------
ALL 1 3 15:00:00 00:00:00 13:28:09_04/27 TID=4 ReqID=0
ALL 1 3 15:00:00 10:00:00 17:14:48_04/28 TID=5 ReqID=0
ALL 1 3 15:00:00 20:00:00 21:01:27_04/29 TID=6 ReqID=0
You can then call up the transaction ID representing the reservation you want to set to automatically reserve those resources.
mrsvctl -c -R 4
For full instructions and details regarding capabilities, go to http://www.clusterresources.com/mshowa.
Contact Us:
Product Feedback, Technical Support, Consulting and Custom Development queries can be sent to info@clusterresources.com or call us at +1 (801) 873-3400.
Moab Workload Manager®, Moab Cluster Manager® and Monitor®, and Moab Access Portal® are trademarks or registered trademarks of Cluster Resources IncorporatedTM.
* TORQUE Resource Manager software developed by NASA Ames Research Center, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and Veridian Information Solutions, Inc. Visit www.OpenPBS.org for OpenPBS software support, products, and information. TORQUE is neither endorsed by nor affiliated with Altair Grid Solutions, Inc.