|
|
||||
|
Bulletin 179 - 2008 August 01
Note: "CSIRO" items can apply to BoM users of cherax and burnet 1. CSIRO IBM Blade Cluster Upgrade The upgrade of the CSIRO clusters burnet and nelson is nearly complete. The two clusters will be merged, with a new systems management node, a new user head node, and two storage server nodes. About 8 Tbyte of new disc is connected, distributed among:
The file systems are managed by IBM's GPFS, which allows for scalable performance and resiliency. The two storage servers are configured using fail-over capabilities. The first group of users will be migrated to the new cluster from Monday 4th August, with other groups to follow. Users will be contacted within a few weeks, to move over to using the new file systems and login nodes. There will be one further downtime on the entire cluster, probably on Saturday 16th August, to re-cable the switch infrastructure in the cluster. [ page top ] The new Altix 4700, temporarily called cherax-1, will be available for user testing from Monday 4th August. However, there are some cautions, that will be displayed upon login. The chief of these is the absence of a batch system, and the fact that all the user file systems are in fact the existing cherax ones, but cross-mounted using NFS. So any changes in those filesystems will affect both the new (test) Altix and the old (production) one. There is potential for great confusion if you work on both machines, since cherax-1 gives its host name as "cherax" once you log in, which was done to make the transition easier in the long run. Please test for the existence and correct running of your applications. It will have the same Wednesday maintenance outages as the production Altix 3700, as we work towards the changeover. A date for that has yet to be chosen, as it depends on the results of testing beforehand. [ page top ] On 17th July, two new tape drives were configured on the CSIRO Data Store Data Migration Facility hosted on the Altix 3700, cherax. The StorageTek/Sun T10000A drives are currently attached to the Bureau's SL8500 tape library. Already, the second copies of all newly migrated files in /cs/datastore are being written to the new tapes, which have greater capacity and higher speed than the older ones. Soon the first and only copies of files in the backup areas will be written to them as well. After that, second copies of files on the T9840 and T9940 tapes will be copied to the new T10000 tapes. This latter process, which will take months, will be done at quiet times, so we expect impact on retrieval of files by users to be low. You can monitor the status of file retrievals through the DMF 'more' report from the traffic lights at http://intra.hpsc.csiro.au/traffic/servicestatus.xml or http://www.hpccc.gov.au/hpccc/system_status/ . The dmget wrapper command has been recently enhanced to provide better grouping of files into batches for retrievals, and further enhancements are being addressed. [ page top ]
[ page top ] 5. CSIRO - Upgraded ASC Software
[ page top ] 6. ARCS Workshop on Video Collaboration Tools ARCS (Australian Research Collaboration Service) will be presenting two workshops on video-collaboration tools (Access Grid and EVO). There are two main sections to these three-day workshops
Day one is highly recommended for any researchers who want to collaborate, not just technical people. The workshop is suited for those who wish to find out what video collaboration is and what it can do for them. The dates for the workshops are:
More information about start times, venues and a detailed schedule are available on the website: http://www.arcs.org.au/videoworkshops. Also attached is a flyer promoting the workshop. Places are limited, so please RSVP. http://www.arcs.org.au/videoworkshops [ page top ] 7. CSIRO ASC and HPCCC staff changes CSIRO ASC and the HPCCC welcome: Joel Ludbey-Bruhwel, who commenced with CSIRO ASC at Docklands on the 2nd of June. His role is GRID systems administration. Peter Edwards, who commenced with CSIRO ASC at Docklands on the 10th of June. His role will be Senior Systems Administrator. Peter formerly worked with NEC, and prior to that with SGI and Cray Research. In the mid 1990s, he was the Cray Site Analyst for the CSIRO Supercomputing Facility. Tim Ho, who commenced with CSIRO ASC at Docklands on the 23rd of June. His role will be User and Application Support Specialist. Steve Fraser, who commenced with CSIRO ASC at Clayton on the 1st of July. His role will be HPC Systems Administration. Steve been working with CSIRO IM&T Business Support for many years and has a wealth of experience in server management, data storage and networking. HPCCC farewells: Polly Morgan, who has taken up the position Senior Systems Administrator in the ASC Cluster Services group at Clayton. [ page top ]
|
|
Comments to: © Copyright 2010, CSIRO Australia Use of this web site and information available from it is subject to our Legal Notice and Disclaimer and Privacy Statement |