Documentation and Information:Computational clusters in Fine Hall

Fine Hall machine room is currently hosting 3 different computational clusters:

Comp computational cluster

Description

Comp cluster is an older cluster consisting of 16 single CPU AMD Athlon machines with speeds around 1.6Ghz and memory per node ranging from 3.5GB to 512MB. Nodes are connected together with 100Mb ethernet networking and have 20GB-40GB hard drives.

Access

This cluster is fully accessible to all members of Math/PACM.

Configuration

The cluster is integrated into Fine Hall Math/PACM network and all the cluster machines mount Math/PACM home directories and run the same operating system version as the rest of Fine Hall Linux machines - PU_IAS/Elders 2WS Linux (clone of RHEL4). The software set also closely matches Fine Hall Linux workstations though some of the graphical/desktop applications with no computational use have not been installed.

For temporary storage, besides /tmp, one can use also /scratch - with no quotas. It must be emphasized that both /scratch and /tmp cannot be used for permanent data storage and no crucial data should be stored there, e.g. use it for intermediate computational results. /tmp and /scratch are NOT backed up and can be erased at any time, especially if a reinstall of one or more machines is required or if one of these directories is full and other users need space.

There is no special scheduling software in use and users are free to choose one or more machines on which to run their software.

How to connect

Comp cluster node names are comp01, comp02, ..., comp16. You can connect to it with ssh but only from math.princeton.edu and pacm.princeton.edu. E.g. ssh comp08. In order to choose a machine which is not used or under less load run compload on either math.princeton.edu or pacm.princeton.edu.

Special Notes

We expect this cluster to be retired within a year or so.