Time and labor estimates

Start-to-finish time (taking into account availability): ~5 weeks (start 7/31, Wed)

Est. labor: ~110 hours for Lulu, plus Michael's hours for networking, hardware configuration, consultation, etc.

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Work descriptions

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Effort
in Hours or days

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Elapse time
(usually days or weeks)

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Est. date

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Install and config CentOS on headnode
(Use Node 2)

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3 days

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1 week

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Install and config Warewulf
Includes attaching one (new) node

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5 days

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1 week

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Install and config Torque / maui

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2 days

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.5 wk

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Install and config WebMO

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5 days

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1 week

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Install and config 2nd (new) node
and 3rd (old) node.

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1 day

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.2 week

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Copy Jun data for test

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2 days

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.5 wk

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Jun (and group) test & tweak

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2 days

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1 week

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Cleanup / additional

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2 days

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.5 wk

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Move old cluster nodes to new Cluster
Keep the old head node for 1 month?

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1 day

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.2 wk

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Move old cluster user data to new cluster
(Collum group down time)

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2 - 3 days

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.5 week

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Total

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25 days

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6.4 weeks

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Plan

Cluster Upgrade Description:

Goal: Upgrade and expand the existing Collum High Performance Computing (HPC) cluster.

The existing cluster consists of a head node and 6 slave compute nodes. The desire is to purchase 2 new nodes and expand the cluster to 8 compute nodes.

Cluster software currently in use includes:

• Fedora 11 - Operating System (2009 release, current version is Fedora 19)
• Perceus - a slave node provisioning and management system (Note: Percus is now obsolete, development has ended.)
• Torque - a distributed resource manager / queuing system, providing control over batch jobs and distributed compute nodes
• Maui Cluster Scheduler - job scheduler for use on clusters
• Web MO - a Web-based interface to computational chemistry packages

Notes:

• Discovery shows that the new nodes will require an updated operating system version, as they are not supported in Fedora 11. (Will not boot on current OS Configuration).
• ChemIT is now using CentOS (6.4) for new OS installations instead of Fedora
• Warewulf has superseded Perceus for cluster node provisioning and management, and is ChemIT's current provisioning package
• Torque and Maui are still the preferred manager and scheduler.

In order to provide a upgrade to current OS and provide a smooth transition, the proposed upgrade and sequence are as follows:

• Build new cluster with current software, utilizing one of of the new nodes as a head node. Once this is working, transition the existing cluster hardware to the new cluster.
  • Install HPC Cluster software- CentOS 6.4, Warewulf, Torque, Maui, and Web MO
  • Install applications
  • Add 2nd new node as a slave, creating a functioning cluster
  • test, verify
  • Move accounts, data, and computing nodes from old cluster to the new cluster.

This will result in a fully upgraded cluster, using the current HPC tools, with a newer Head node (Under Warranty).

Plan

See work estimates below See above work descriptions for detailed steps.

Overview plan:

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• If so, use another node (for example, 3).

Time and labor estimates

Start-to-finish time (taking into account availability): ~5 weeks (start 7/31, Wed)

Est. labor: ~110 hours for Lulu, plus Michael's hours for networking, hardware configuration, consultation, etc.