LOUIS Systems Configuration

Hardware

Feature	Production	Test / Training
Picture
Model	IBM RS/6000 7017-S85	IBM RS/6000 7026-B80
CPUs	12 x PowerPC RS64-IV capacity of 24	2 x PowerPC POWER3 capacity of 4
Memory	32 GB capacity of 64 GB	2 GB capacity of 4 GB
Local Disk	4 x 18.4 GB mirrored, OS only	2 x 18.4 GB mirrored, OS only
SHARK Disk	81 x 4 GB Sirsi binaries and institutional data	81 x 4 GB Sirsi binaries and institutional data
Network	2 x Gigabit Ethernet Channel bonded, public access	2 x 10/100 Ethernet Channel bonded, public access
	N/A	1 x 10/100 Ethernet administrative access
Fiber Channel	2 x 1 Gigabit	1 x 1 Gigabit

Software

• Both systems run IBM's AIX flavor of UNIX at version 5.2 ML2.
• There is a single installation of Sirsi's Unicorn binaries.
• IBM's Red Hat's Package Manager (RPM) is used to install GNU and other tools as .rpm packages.
• Apache is running a single instance with virtual hosts defined for each institution's iLink interface, EZPROXY, and other administrative needs.
• OpenSSH is the only means of interactive access with the node.
• rlpr provides network printing.

SHARK

We have an IBM SAN, the ESS 2105-F20, which contains roughly 13.5 TB of disk space. This disk is carved into whatever sizes are desired and assigned to either the mainframe, or UNIX or Windows hosts. The disk is accessed via a seperate fiber channel network with fiber optic cables.

Each institution has a seperate filesystem on their own dedicated SHARK disk(s). AIX supports Logical Volume Management (LVM) so we can dynamically allocate new SHARK space and add it to the institutions on the fly (each institution has its own volume group).

Caveats

• SSH or SFTP:
  • all hosts accessing the system must have both a forward and reverse DNS entry to gain access
  • programmatic transfers can be accomplished using keys (public / private key pairs)
  • if data needs to be transferred from a mainframe (FTP only) we offer the transit.lsu.edu system
• Network printing:
  • the LPD port 515 can not be blocked or filtered

Casper

The Casper stands for the Callaway Advanced Scalable Parallel Environment for Research. It was put into operation in March, 2000 and got a major hardware and software upgrade in August, 2003. Casper is a production UNIX-derived research computing platform being offered by the High Performance Computing group at OCS. It provides interactive as well as sequential (batch) and parallel computing environments. It is available to research faculty, research associates, graduate students or other distinguished guests.

There are 16 parallel nodes in Casper for a total of 32 processors. Those nodes are contained within a single SP frame. An SP frame also contains a 48V power supply for each node along with public and private Ethernet connections and also connections to a high preformance network switch. Casper also has three batch execution nodes for execution of serial programs and two storage nodes providing a total of 650 GB of disk to hold user data. Jobs are written, compiled, and submitted to Casper from one of the two dedicated interactive nodes.

Nodes

Node Type	Interactive	Storage	Batch Execution	Parallel Execution
Picture
Count	2	2	3	16

Staff

The systems are managed by the High Performance Computing group (HPC) of the Office of Computing Services (OCS) at LSU. The team has three systems administrators who maintain over 80 AIX systems and many GNU/Linux systems for various groups within OCS. Their primary responsibility is to provide and maintain a research computing environment called Casper. An additional staff member provides direct user support for Casper.

Besides administering systems, the team also provides technical consultation to various OCS groups and assists in new implementations. The group is also the primary contact for any UNIX or GNU/Linux security issues within OCS or on LSU's campus.

Contact Information

• Brian Ropers-Huilman: bropers@lsu.edu
• Isaac Traxler: traxler@lsu.edu
• Allen Gordon: snallen@lsu.edu

SuperMike

SuperMike is a cluster of regular computers tied together on a dedicated network to provide massive amounts of computational power. Each “node” in the cluster is almost the same as a desktop computer. They each have two Intel Xeon processors running at 3.0 GHz, 2 GB of memory, a regular network interface, and a dedicated high-speed, low-latency network interface from Myricom that is dedicated to message passing between the nodes. Initially, SuperMike was the 11th fastest computer in the world, was the second fastest computer at a public university, and was the fastest Linux-based cluster on the planet.

There are 512 compute nodes in the cluster for a total of 1024 processors. Jobs are written, compiled, and submitted to the cluster from one of the four dedicated interactive or “head” nodes. There are also five storage nodes providing a total of 5 TB of disk to hold large data sets.

The system was purchased for only $2.8 million with funds from Governor M.J. "Mike" Foster's information technology initiative. at the time of its purchase, SuperMike was the most cost efficient supercomputer in the world. The computer, named for both Governor Mike Foster and the LSU mascot, will help researchers to solve various science and engineering problems much more efficiently and accurately. Researchers with projects that require massive amounts of computer power not previously available on campus are now taking advantage of SuperMike's computational ability. Model simulations that once took 30 days are now being completed in 24 hours. Researchers use the computer to model various science and engineering problems. A few specific projects deal with coastal erosion and storm damage, complex molecules of interest to the petrochemical industry, the merger of binary black holes, cooling flows in gas turbine engines, and the protein structure of living organisms.

SuperMike, its little brother named MiniMike (a 16 node / 32 processor cluster for testing applications), and SuperHelix (a 128 node / 256 processor cluster) are all managed by the Center for Computation and Technology, formerly the LSU Center for Applied Information Technology And Learning (LSU CAPITAL).