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The cluster is two large machines each with 64 processor cores and 515 GB RAM, for a total of 128 cores and 1.03 TB of RAM, that is accessible through a scheduler. Using two special commands (sbatch and srun), you request the scheduler to allocate one or more compute nodes for a job. The scheduler puts your job in a queue and executes it when sufficient compute nodes are available. The advantage of this type of processing is that you can submit many requests (hundreds or thousands), and they will run as resources become available. It also means that when you gain access to a compute node, you have sole access to it during the time your code is running, i.e., you’re not competing with other individuals for CPU cycles.
The cluster nodes are running Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.3 (Ootpa) and have C++ compilers, core R packages, and Python available.
We use a scheduler system called the Simple Linux Utility for Resource Management (Slurm) developed by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. It is one of the most popular systems among large high-performance clusters and is the one used by the University of Maryland Deepthought supercomputer. This means that any submission script you develop on our modest cluster can be easily ported to a much larger HPC system.
Job scheduler policies
In contrast to many computing clusters at larger institutions that have to manage hundreds of simultaneous users, the SESYNC cluster has relatively few users so we can get away with very lenient cluster use policies. For example, we have no default limits on memory use for jobs. However, if the total RAM in use on a node exceeds what is available on that node (515 GB), jobs on that node may terminate with an out-of-memory error, so please keep an eye on your memory use.
Because of our lenient policies, we rely on the honor system to manage our cluster — it’s up to you to be a good neighbor! We only have two cluster nodes so you will likely have to share the node your job is running on with other users. That means it’s important to make sure your job stays within reasonable limits of time and memory use. It is not very neighborly to use all 64 processor cores for a job that will run for days. In addition, we don’t have any time limit set on users’ jobs — again it’s up to you to keep an eye on your jobs and make sure you are not abusing the communal resources.
Also see the quick start page on the cluster.
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