From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Ricardo Wurmus Subject: Re: Guix on clusters and in HPC Date: Wed, 26 Oct 2016 14:08:23 +0200 Message-ID: <877f8vgvns.fsf@elephly.net> References: <87r37divr8.fsf@gnu.org> <86vawh9lvw.fsf@gmail.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Return-path: Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:47275) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1bzN0Z-0002Xj-9j for guix-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 26 Oct 2016 08:08:40 -0400 Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1bzN0Y-000592-BU for guix-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 26 Oct 2016 08:08:39 -0400 In-reply-to: <86vawh9lvw.fsf@gmail.com> List-Id: "Development of GNU Guix and the GNU System distribution." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: guix-devel-bounces+gcggd-guix-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sender: "Guix-devel" To: myglc2 Cc: Guix-devel myglc2 writes: > While SGE is dated and can be a bear to use, it provides a useful > yardstick for HPC/Cluster functionality. So it is useful to consider how > Guix(SD) might impact this model. Presumably a defining characteristic > of GuixSD clusters is that the software configuration of compute hosts > no longer needs to be fixed and the user can "dial in" a specific SW > configuration for each job step. This is in many ways a good thing. But > it also generates new requirements. How does one specify the SW config > for a given job or recipe step: > > 1) VM image? > > 2) VM? > > 3) Installed System Packages? > > 4) Installed (user) packages? At the MDC we’re using SGE and users specify their software environment in the job script. The software environment is a Guix profile, so the job script usually contains a line to source the profile’s “etc/profile”, which has the effect of setting up the required environment variables. I don’t know of anyone who uses VMs or VM images to specify software environments. > Based on my experiments with Guix/Debian, GuixSD, VMs, and VM images it > is not obvious to me which of these levels of abstraction is > appropriate. FWIW we’re using Guix on top of CentOS 6.8. The store is mounted read-only on all cluster nodes. > The most forward-thinking group that I know discarded their cluster > hardware a year ago to replace it with starcluster > (http://star.mit.edu/cluster/). Starcluster automates the creation, > care, and feeding of a HPC clusters on AWS using the Grid Engine > scheduler and AMIs. The group has a full-time "starcluster jockey" who > manages their cluster and they seem quite happy with the approach. So > you may want to consider starcluster as a model when you think of > cluster management requirements. When using starcluster are software environments transferred to AWS on demand? Does this happen on a per-job basis? Are any of the instantiated machines persistent or are they discarded after use? ~~ Ricardo