1. Rocks ‘n’ Rolls An Introduction to Programming Clusters using Rocks © 2008 UC Regents Anoop Rajendra

2. Rules of the Talk This talk is for YOU!! Let me know if I’m too fast Don’t hesitate to stop me and ask questions in the middle. © 2008 UC Regents

3. What is Rocks? A Linux distribution based on CentOS Cluster on a DVD ( or set of CDs) Goals of Rocks –Make Clusters Easy –Reduce dependence on system administrators by reducing system administration –Enable scientists to concentrate on science rather than on computing. © 2008 UC Regents

4. How do we get Started? Get a bunch of x86/x64 machines Put 2 ethernet cards on one of them - This’ll be your front-end/head-node Wire 'em up. Download Rocks isos from www.rocksclusters.org www.rocksclusters.org Burn a bunch of CDs or a DVD Get started © 2008 UC Regents

5. Topology of a Rocks Cluster © 2008 UC Regents Frontend Node Public Ethernet Private Ethernet Application Network (Optional) Node Power Distribution (Net addressable units as option)

6. Another way to look at it © 2008 UC Regents

7. Installing Rocks Rocks provides for installation of a cluster with minimum user interaction Steps involved –Boot from CD or DVD –Answer a few questions –Get favorite beverage –You’re on your way to a full fledged cluster in 2 hours or less. © 2008 UC Regents

8. Innards of Automatic Installs Rocks uses Redhat’s Kickstart mechanism for automated installs Kickstart file generated and given to the installer Installer follows instructions in Kickstart file. Generation of Kickstart file done automatically by Rocks scripts © 2008 UC Regents

24. After Frontend Installation © 2008 UC Regents

25. Add compute nodes using insert-ethers © 2008 UC Regents

29. How does Rocks do all this? Using a mechanism called Rolls © 2008 UC Regents

30. What are Rolls? Software components that make up a Rocks system Mechanism for delivery of packages and configuration Rolls are how you’re going to get your software onto a Rocks cluster © 2008 UC Regents

31. What are some of the available rolls? Sun Grid Engine Roll – Deploys SGE on all nodes and enabled job provisioning Bio Roll – Application Roll for Bio-informatics applications Xen Roll – Roll to deploy virtual machines Viz Roll – Roll that enabled building tile wall displays PVFS2 Roll – Installs and Configures the Parallel Virtual File System on your cluster © 2008 UC Regents

32. Viz Wall © 2008 UC Regents

33. Another Viz Wall © 2008 UC Regents

34. Roll Infrastructure Rolls are distributed as ISO images Add a CD or leave a CD out during installation & you control the configuration and capability of your cluster © 2008 UC Regents

35. What’s inside a Roll? Binaries - RPM format Configuration data Installation Map © 2008 UC Regents

36. Context of a Roll © 2008 UC Regents

37. Normal Redhat Distribution © 2008 UC Regents

38. Distribution based on Rolls © 2008 UC Regents

39. Treasure Hunting The treasure you seek is a fully installed and configured cluster What are the things you’ll need © 2008 UC Regents

40. Map © 2008 UC Regents

41. Instruction set © 2008 UC Regents

42. Resources © 2008 UC Regents

43. Translate that to a Roll Graph file ⇔ Installation Map ⇔ Map Node Files ⇔ Configuration Data ⇔ Instruction set RPM/Binaries ⇔ Resources © 2008 UC Regents

44. Bio Roll © 2008 UC Regents

45. What’s inside the Bio Roll? Bio-informatics software like –NCBI Blast –MPI Blast –HMMER –GROMACS –EMBOSS –Phylip –TCoffee © 2008 UC Regents

46. What’s inside the Roll? © 2008 UC Regents

47. What’s the graph file? bio-base …… bio-head © 2008 UC Regents

48. How does the graph look? © 2008 UC Regents

49. How does a node file look? hmmer ncbi …… mpiblast # Shell Scripts to be run after installation file contents … # Shell Scripts to be run after installation © 2008 UC Regents

50. Node files are the instruction sets in the roll. © 2008 UC Regents

51. To Re-iterate © 2008 UC Regents

52. Bio-informatics Applications

53. © 2008 UC Regents Configuration Information

54. © 2008 UC Regents Bio-informatics Application THE ROLL Configuration Information

55. How does it fit in? © 2008 UC Regents Bio Roll

56. How does it fit in? © 2008 UC Regents

57. How does all this help you? Roll mechanism is the recommended way of deploying software on a Rocks cluster It fits into the framework of Rocks It’s reproducible It scales © 2008 UC Regents

58. Other Ways of Software Deployment More than one way to get your software onto the rocks cluster Not recommended as it is not reproducible over multiple re-installs. © 2008 UC Regents

59. RPM Based Deployment –Put your RPM in /home/install/contrib/5.0/arch/RPM –Create the node xml file to reflect new package # cd /home/install/site-profiles/5.0/nodes # cp skeleton.xml extend-compute.xml –Inside extend-compute.xml file, put the line rpm name –Re-create the rocks distribution # cd /home/install # rocks-dist dist –Re-install your compute nodes © 2008 UC Regents

60. Installing in a Shared directory /export/apps is shared across the entire cluster as /share/apps Install your package into /export/apps/package On all your compute nodes the package directory will be /share/apps/package © 2008 UC Regents

61. More Information More Documentation available at www.rocksclusters.org © 2008 UC Regents

62. Questions © 2008 UC Regents