Why use a Cluster?
- “High Performance Computing (HPC) typically involves connecting to very large computing systems elsewhere in the world.”
- “These other systems can be used to do work that would either be impossible or much slower on smaller systems.”
- “HPC resources are shared by multiple users.”
- “The standard method of interacting with such systems is via a command line interface.”
Connecting to a remote HPC system
- “An HPC system is a set of networked machines.”
- “HPC systems typically provide login nodes and a set of worker nodes.”
- “The resources found on independent (worker) nodes can vary in volume and type (amount of RAM, processor architecture, availability of network mounted filesystems, etc.).”
- “Files saved on one node are available on all nodes.”
Exploring Remote Resources
- “An HPC system is a set of networked machines.”
- “HPC systems typically provide login nodes and a set of compute nodes.”
- “The resources found on independent (worker) nodes can vary in volume and type (amount of RAM, processor architecture, availability of network mounted filesystems, etc.).”
- “Files saved on shared storage are available on all nodes.”
- “The login node is a shared machine: be considerate of other users.”
Scheduler Fundamentals
- “The scheduler handles how compute resources are shared between users.”
- “A job is just a shell script.”
- “Request slightly more resources than you will need.”