66 lines
2.7 KiB
Markdown
66 lines
2.7 KiB
Markdown
---
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title: Introduction
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#tags:
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#keywords:
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last_updated: 28 June 2019
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#summary: "Merlin 6 cluster overview"
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sidebar: merlin6_sidebar
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permalink: /merlin6/introduction.html
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redirect_from:
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- /merlin6
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- /merlin6/index.html
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---
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## The Merlin local HPC cluster
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Historically, the local HPC clusters at PSI were named **Merlin**. Over the years,
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multiple generations of Merlin have been deployed.
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At present, the **Merlin local HPC cluster** contains _two_ generations of it: the old **Merlin5** cluster and the newest **Merlin6**.
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### Merlin6
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Merlin6 is a the official PSI Local HPC cluster for development and
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mission-critical applications that has been built in 2019. It replaces
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the Merlin5 cluster.
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Merlin6 is designed to be extensible, so is technically possible to add
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more compute nodes and cluster storage without significant increase of
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the costs of the manpower and the operations.
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Merlin6 contains all the main services needed for running cluster, including
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**login nodes**, **storage**, **computing nodes** and other *subservices*,
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connected to the central PSI IT infrastructure.
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#### CPU and GPU Slurm clusters
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The Merlin6 **computing nodes** are mostly based on **CPU** resources. However,
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it also contains a small amount of **GPU**-based resources, which are mostly used
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by the BIO Division and by Deep Leaning project.
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These computational resources are split into **two** different **[Slurm](https://slurm.schedmd.com/overview.html)** clusters:
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* The Merlin6 CPU nodes are in a dedicated **[Slurm](https://slurm.schedmd.com/overview.html)** cluster called [**`merlin6`**](/merlin6/slurm-configuration.html).
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* This is the **default Slurm cluster** configured in the login nodes: any job submitted without the option `--cluster` will be submited to this cluster.
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* The Merlin6 GPU resources are in a dedicated **[Slurm](https://slurm.schedmd.com/overview.html)** cluster called [**`gmerlin6`**](/gmerlin6/slurm-configuration.html).
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* Users submitting to the **`gmerlin6`** GPU cluster need to specify the option ``--cluster=gmerlin6``.
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### Merlin5
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The old Slurm **CPU** *merlin* cluster is still active and is maintained in a best effort basis.
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**Merlin5** only contains **computing nodes** resources in a dedicated **[Slurm](https://slurm.schedmd.com/overview.html)** cluster.
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* The Merlin5 CPU cluster is called [**merlin5**](/merlin5/slurm-configuration.html).
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## Merlin Architecture
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The following image shows the Slurm architecture design for the Merlin5 & Merlin6 clusters:
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![Merlin6 Slurm Architecture Design]({{ "/images/merlin-slurm-architecture.png" }})
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### Merlin6 Architecture Diagram
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The following image shows the Merlin6 cluster architecture diagram:
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![Merlin6 Architecture Diagram]({{ "/images/merlinschema3.png" }})
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