1. Information Technology at Emory Information Technology Division Technical Services IT Briefing Agenda 7/17/05 Microsoft Agreement SPSS Site License IMAP Polling NetReg/CAT Update Research Cluster Premiere Support NetCom Q&A John Ellis Marcy Alexander Ken Guyton Alan White Keven Haynes Karen Jenkins Paul Petersen

2. Information Technology at Emory General Updates

3. Information Technology at Emory Eagle Mail Performance An opportunity to make it faster Ken Guyton

4. Information Technology at Emory Information Technology Division Technical Services Architecture Eagle mail consists of three services –Relay –Delivery –Reading

5. Information Technology at Emory Information Technology Division Technical Services Architecture Relay –Moving email from computer to computer (SMTP)

6. Information Technology at Emory Information Technology Division Technical Services Architecture Delivery –Delivering messages into an INBOX.

7. Information Technology at Emory Information Technology Division Technical Services Architecture Reading –Users retrieving their messages to read them, mark as read, delete, etc. (IMAP)

8. Information Technology at Emory Information Technology Division Technical Services Architecture RelaySpam Read/Deliv Virus IMAP proxy Webmail firewall disk 24 6 3 4 LDAP routing other svrs clients Relay 3

9. Information Technology at Emory Information Technology Division Technical Services The Situation Reading and Delivery live on the same servers.

10. Information Technology at Emory Information Technology Division Technical Services The Situation 12345 Read/Delivery Servers 100% CPU Utilization CPU Utilization 90% 50% 80% 50%

11. Information Technology at Emory Information Technology Division Technical Services The Situation 12345 Read/Delivery Servers 100% CPU Utilization 12300 4168 12809 8313 75 Users per server 90% 50% 80% 50%

12. Information Technology at Emory Information Technology Division Technical Services The Question What are 75 users doing to use 50% of a Read/Delivery server?

13. Information Technology at Emory Information Technology Division Technical Services Observations Make some measurements of busy IMAP processes Tracing with truss Profile processes Packet snooping

14. Information Technology at Emory Information Technology Division Technical Services Observations...to answer questions: –What are these processes doing? –What system calls are using the most CPU time? –What IMAP commands are being sent? –...and how often?

15. Information Technology at Emory Information Technology Division Technical Services Results Processes are doing a lot of disk I/O. The system calls that account for the vast majority of CPU time are read() and alarm(). The IMAP command is SELECT

16. Information Technology at Emory Information Technology Division Technical Services More Observations Instrument the imapd daemon (we have the source code!) Log SELECTS on a user and mailbox basis Plot behavior

17. Information Technology at Emory Information Technology Division Technical Services Results ≤ 1 min ≤ 5 min> 5 min

18. Information Technology at Emory Information Technology Division Technical Services Conclusions High-frequency SELECTs are killing us A new server/75 users is EXPENSIVE!

19. Information Technology at Emory Information Technology Division Technical Services Hypothesis When clients check for new email they send a SELECT (They should send a NOOP) Users are setting their clients to check for email every minute

20. Information Technology at Emory Information Technology Division Technical Services Final Notes Webmail checks every five minutes (and does use SELECT) Some clients have a drop-down menu to select this time (1-min, 5- min, etc.)

21. Information Technology at Emory Information Technology Division Technical Services Our Plea See if your users are polling < 5 min 10 min is better You can always manually check for new email Help them change their polling time if needed

22. Information Technology at Emory Information Technology Division Technical Services The UNIX Group Chris Alexander Bruce Anderson Karla Fields Amanda Gagnon Ken Guyton Curt Tucker Eric Van Wieren

23. Information Technology at Emory NetReg/CAT Update Alan White

24. Information Technology at Emory Emory University High Performance Computing Cluster Keven Haynes

25. Information Technology at Emory Information Technology Division Technical Services Need for High Performance Large number of computations Large data set Complex computations Specialized applications More disciplines doing computational work

26. Information Technology at Emory Information Technology Division Technical Services Need for Shared Resources Most researchers do not have physical resources to house large computing systems. Air Conditioning, Power, Security are all important, often overlooked. Many researchers lack technical expertise required to manage systems, especially Linux/Unix. Most personally-owned systems are underutilized, therefore not as cost-effective. Money pooled-together can buy bigger and better systems.

27. Information Technology at Emory Information Technology Division Technical Services Emory High Performance Computing Cluster Partnership between Emory College, BIMCORE (School of Medicine) and ITD. Emory College and individual faculty (Jeager, Printz) provided funding for purchase of the cluster. BIMCORE provides software expertise, cost- recovery infrastructure. ITD provides facility and system administration.

28. Information Technology at Emory Information Technology Division Technical Services The Cluster - hardware 63 dual-processor (AMD 2.2 GHz Opteron 248) Sun V20z’s “Compute Nodes” 1 quad-processor (AMD 2.2 GHZ Opteron 848) Sun V40z “Master Node” Compute Nodes have 2 GB of RAM each, Master node has 8GB. Each node has 73 GB of local disk space (RAID 1) Master Node has 550+ GB of local disk space Two 47u APC powered rack enclosures

29. Information Technology at Emory Information Technology Division Technical Services The Cluster - Networking All nodes connected via gigabit Ethernet (copper) on private network Two SMC gigabit switches 21 Nodes are connected via 4 gigabit Myrinet Service processors connected via 100 Mb Ethernet Two MRV serial console switches

30. Information Technology at Emory Information Technology Division Technical Services The Cluster - Software Red Hat Enterprise Linux - Version 3, x86_64, Advanced Server and Workstation –Kernel 2.4.21, glibc 2.3.2, gcc version 3.2.3 –64-bit Operating system/runtime environment Sun Grid Engine TM : –Manages queuing and prioritization of jobs –Performs job and user accounting for time-shared resource –Can support up to 200,000 jobs simultaneously –Heterogeneous support allows connection of Mac OS X, Solaris and other execution hosts

31. Information Technology at Emory Information Technology Division Technical Services Current and Future Applications Genesis (neural simulator, Jaeger) Pattern Generation and Homeostasis in Neural Circuits (Prinz) Pharmacology (Severson) Others: –Animation Rendering –Statistical Analysis (-R-) –Numerical Analyis (MATLAB) –Bioinformatics (BLAST) –Large Population Studies, GIS

32. Information Technology at Emory Information Technology Division Technical Services Who may use the Cluster? Researchers, namely PI’s Open to anyone affiliated with Emory, possibly some external research Subscription Fee: ~ $3000/year or $750/quarter

33. Information Technology at Emory Information Technology Division Technical Services Questions?

34. Information Technology at Emory Premiere Support Overview Karen Jenkins

35. Information Technology at Emory Information Technology Division Technical Services Premiere Support Advanced/escalated support for specific set of customers –Local support and other campus technical professionals –Executive leadership (later phase) Benefits –Dedicated number to reduce wait times –Direct entry to high level support technicians

36. Information Technology at Emory Information Technology Division Technical Services When to use Reporting of system down and other performance issues only. –University Enterprise applications & Network –Examples include: Network Outage affecting a large department, building, or campus; Eagle Mail is down; PeopleSoft is crawling; other “strange” behavior Non-critical or other work requests should go through Manage IT or ESR. –Examples include: account requests, virus reporting, suggestions to improve service, etc.

37. Information Technology at Emory Information Technology Division Technical Services Logistics Hours: M-F 8:00am – 5:00pm After hours calls automatically forwarded to the help desk (which forward to on- call after help desk hours). Premiere Support Team: –Call Center supervisor –Craig Myers –Linda Ellis

38. Information Technology at Emory Information Technology Division Technical Services Responsibilities Obtain technical input/details Escalate to proper Tier 3 team Provide regular communication and updates –Via Manage IT Bulletin Board Provide final debrief / explanation of problem –Again via Manage IT

39. Information Technology at Emory Information Technology Division Technical Services Setup Dedicated line rings on the primary team members phone sets After 4 rings rolls over to help desk FTE phones … if busy the queue –Premiere Support calls are placed in the front of the queue. –Investigating adding a visual indicator for the help desk FTEs.

40. Information Technology at Emory Information Technology Division Technical Services Pre-Requisites Requires a support account in Manage IT Participation in the local-l listserv Caller ID information displayed

41. Information Technology at Emory Information Technology Division Technical Services … and the number is … Will be posted on the Manage IT Bulleting Board Available on TBD

42. Information Technology at Emory Information Technology Division Technical Services INPUT, QUESTIONS, COMMENTS

43. Information Technology at Emory Information Technology Division Technical Services Quick Manage IT Update New Manage IT Major Features for 8/31/05 –Flashboards –Port Status Table –2-Way email –Assignment permissions group Target Features for 9/30/05 –PS Status Table –Emory Reports –Magic View –Resolution / Communication to requester Manage IT Training Session Scheduled for: September 13 th @ 1:00pm NDB Auditorium or Kennessaw

44. Information Technology at Emory Information Technology Division Technical Services Quick ESR Update New ESR Major Features by 8/31/05 –Change pop-ups to long names –Web & DB self-service forms Target Features for 9/30/05 –On-behalf of (in Manage IT too) –Communication box

45. Information Technology at Emory Information Technology Division Technical Services NetCom Q&A