Service Description The High Performance Computing Services Group in the IT Division offers the
following services for LBNL and UC Berkeley researchers who own or want to acquire
a Linux cluster to meet their computational needs.
- Pre-purchase consulting - Understand customer
application; Determine cluster
hardware architecture and interconnect; Identify required software;
- Procurement assistance - Assistance with
developing a budget, development of RFP.
- Setup and configuration - This includes installation and setup
of the cluster hardware and networking; and installation and configuration
of cluster software, scheduler, and applications software
- Ongoing systems administration and cyber security - operating system and cluster software maintenance and upgrades; security updates; monitoring of cluster nodes; user accounts
- Computer room space with networking and cooling -
Clusters will be hosted in the either the Bldg 50B-1275 or Earl Warren Hall datacenter to insure access to sufficient electrical, cooling, and
networking infrastructure. PIs are responsible for covering the purchase costs of racks, PDUs, cooling doors, and seismic bracing for new installations.
Clusters are hosted in a Supercluster infrastructure provided by HPC Services consisting of a dedicated firewall subnet; one-time password authentication; multiple interactive login nodes; access to shared third-party compilers, scientific libraries, and applications; shared home directory storage and Lustre parallel filesystem. This Supercluster infrastructure is used by all the clusters within the datacenter to facilitate the movement of researchers across projects and the sharing of compute resources.
Requirements
Systems in the SCS or Berkeley Research Computing Program must meet the following requirements to be
eligible for support:
- Intel x86-64 architecture
- Participating cluster must have a minimum of 8 compute nodes
- Dedicated cluster architecture. No interactive logins on compute nodes
- Scientific Linux 6.x operating system
- Warewulf3 cluster implementation toolkit
- SchedMD SLURM scheduler
- OpenMPI message passing library
- All slave nodes only reachable from master node
Clusters that will be located in the datacenter must meet the
following additional requirements
- Rack mounted hardware required. Desktop form factor hardware not allowed
- Equipment to be installed into APC Netshelter AR3300 computer racks using 2 ea. APC AP8867 PDUs. Prospective cluster owners
should include the cost of these racks and PDUs into their planning budget
Rates
Berkeley Lab has determined that it will cover the cost of the Lab's HPC
infrastructure including investment in the data center and the cost of
maintaining HPC expertise. Therefore, PIs are only charged for the
incremental effort of adding their cluster into our support pool.
Pricing for PI-owned clusters can be calculated by using the following
rates that
apply to their configuration.
- Master node: $300/mo.
- Infiniband support: $300/mo.
- Storage node: $300/mo. per compute node
- IBM GPFS or Lustre support: $300/mo.
- Compute node: $15/mo. per compute node
- 1275 Data Center Colocation: $100/mo per rack
For example, support for a 20-node standalone cluster with an infiniband interconnect would be priced at:
$300/mo master + $300/mo. infiniband support + (20 nodes x $15/mo/node) = $880/mo.
Backups for storage servers are available from the IT Backups Group and are priced separately.
PIs should check the SCS Service Level Agreement
for a full description of the program provisions and requirements.
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