From info at clusterresources.com Tue Feb 8 11:29:15 2005 From: info at clusterresources.com (info) Date: Tue Feb 8 13:49:11 2005 Subject: [Newsupdates] Cluster Resources' February Newsletter Message-ID: Cluster Resources Newsletter - February 2005 __________________________________________________ www.ClusterResources.com __________________________________________________ NEWS AND ANNOUNCEMENTS 1.NEW MAUI RELEASE ANNOUNCED FOR MARCH 2005 2.REVIEW OF SUPERCOMPUTING CONFERENCE 3.TORQUE 1.2.0 RELEASED 4.MOAB EXPANDS HOSTING AND DATA CENTER CAPABILITIES 5.MOAB CLUSTER SUITE DEVELOPMENT UPDATES 6.DID YOU KNOW: MALLEABLE JOBS ******************************************************************************** NEW MAUI RELEASE ANNOUNCED FOR MARCH 2005 Cluster Resources announced that a new version of Maui Cluster Scheduler will be released within the next six weeks. The new release will include improvements in security, fault tolerance, resource limit enforcement policies, SLURM and LSF support, workload prioritization and diagnostics. The 2005 release marks the 10th anniversary since Maui's creation. Both Cluster Resources' community and professional software projects are growing at a torrid pace with significant growth among Fortune 1000, general commercial, government and academic organizations. Thanks to everyone for making this possible and please continue to let us know what we can do to make our products even better! ******************************************************************************** REVIEW OF SUPERCOMPUTING CONFERENCE During the November 2004 Supercomputing conference, Maui users gathered to discuss past and future improvements for Maui Cluster Scheduler and other Cluster Resources products. The accomplishments of 2004 included multi-requirement job support, generic resource support, floating resource support, desktop harvesting support, enhanced throttling policies, quality of service and usage limits, and tracking of detailed information regarding resource availability for specific needs. The group also discussed future needs and improvements to the open-source scheduler, such as encryption and improved LoadLeveler support. Some of these enhancements will already be available in the upcoming March release. ******************************************************************************** TORQUE 1.2.0 NEW RELEASE TORQUE 1.2.0p0 was officially released to the public last week. The latest release of TORQUE provides multiple reliability and scalability enhancements. Among these are better MOM handling of network and system failures, and improved data management under adverse conditions. For a complete list of fixes and features see the CHANGELOG in the latest release. Working with partner sites, Cluster Resources, Inc. has also enhanced the TORQUE Resource Manager to provide several workarounds for OS-level client-server communication failures and memory reporting issues in Mac OS X. The latest release has solved all known issues associated with these failures. Great progress has been made on all fronts and a huge thanks goes out to the many sites contributing patches and suggestions. TORQUE now contains more than 600 contributed patches, enhancements, and design improvements and the contributions are continuing unabated. Testing of this latest release has gone extremely well, and Cluster Resources continues to get a very positive response from all sites and platforms. Further thanks go out to the many TORQUE users who are making excellent suggestions for the road map and helping each other with usage and other issues. TORQUE 1.2.0 has been a major stability release. If any issues are uncovered, please let us know via the mailing list or Bugzilla. The next release will be a development release containing multiple enhancements in the areas of support for new platforms and capabilities (i.e. Altix an CPUSets), improved diagnostics, and increased usability. (See http://clusterresources.com/torque) ******************************************************************************** MOAB EXPANDS HOSTING AND DATA CENTER CAPABILITIES Have you ever wanted to build a custom supercomputer on the fly? Building on its patented utility based computing infrastructure, Moab is allowing an increasing number of sites do just that, co-allocating compute, data, and network resources and orchestrating security, provisioning, and customization activities. From an end user's point of view, requesting a dedicated cluster can consist of little more than logging in to the Web-based hosting portal, specifying the high level needs and pushing a button. Behind the scenes, Moab determines when and where resources will be available and what steps will be required to get them ready. As needed, management of VLAN's, OS installs, data staging, and resource customization activities are coordinated and executed. While provisioning is occurring transparently in the background, Moab informs the user of when and how to log in, and, at the appropriate time, enables remote access. Sites are already using this capability to enable access to massive data sets, additional compute resources, custom applications and special hardware. The technology can be used for both internal and external customers and can support any quantity of resources from a fraction of a single node to a multi-thousand processor cluster. And because it is based on Moab technology, complete resource tracking, service guarantees, usage policies, accounting, integrated billing and diagnostics are built-in. The ability to join scheduling, policy management, generalized resource monitoring (compute, storage, network, license, generic, etc.) and event triggers with the capability to connect with provisioning managers, identity managers, databases and many other services provides a powerful foundation for utility-based computing. This foundation is also showing value in the Data Center with opportunities to leverage Moab technologies to automate the processes that allow dynamic allocation of compute, data, and network resources to applications as demand changes. High Performance Computing, utility based computing and data center needs are overlapping more and more. As a result, standard clusters are becoming increasingly dynamic and agile, tuning both resources to meet workload and workload to meet resources. If the projects Cluster Resources is currently engaged in are any sign of future directions, full utility-based computing is going to be a major force in cluster computing. If you would like to see what Moab Hosting Services can do for you, give us a call at 1 (801) 873-3400. ******************************************************************************** MOAB CLUSTER SUITE DEVELOPMENT UPDATES The upcoming version of the Moab Cluster Suite focuses on improving user-friendliness and compatibility. This edition includes a reorganized graphical user interface that makes managing clusters even more intuitive and understandable. One of the new features on the improved GUI is the visual reservation tool, which allows administrators to see a graphical representation of available resources and to change reservations by simply moving or stretching the reservation object. The administrator is able to reserve any number of the available processors over a specified period of time by highlighting them using the mouse. The new Moab release also expands its multiple resource manager support by adding support for LoadLeveler on Linux and improved Native Resource Manager abilities. The improved Native Resource Manager interface vastly expands Moab's ability to communicate with and gather data from any arbitrary file, executable or Web resource and incorporate it into one unified global view. Improved triggers allow for automated administrative tasks, and improved statistics provide for better tracking of resource usage and policy failures. The software can also establish proper tuning of policies more accurately. ******************************************************************************** DID YOU KNOW: MALLEABLE JOBS Moab Cluster Suite v4.2 includes malleable jobs, a scheduling feature that can increase workload productivity and node utilization. When users submit a job they can select the task request list flag, which allows Moab to change the number of processors for which it is submitted. For example, a job that is submitted to run for 10 minutes on one processor may instead be changed by Moab to run for five minutes on two processors or three and a half minutes on three processors, in order to most effectively utilize available resources and reduce response times. When a job is submitted with a task request list attached, Moab will determine which task request fits best and mold the job based on its specifications. To submit a job with a task request list and allow Moab to mold it based on the current scheduler environment, use the TRL flag in the Resource Manager Extension. Its like playing Tetris, but being able to change the shape of the pieces to better fit the holes and get even higher scores! ______________________________________________________ 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 MoabWorkload ManagerTM, Moab Cluster ManagerTM and MonitorTM, and Moab Access PortalTM are trademarks or registered trademarks of Cluster Resources IncorporatedTM. "But Tetris is definitely not our trademark."