Key Components for Setting Up an HPC Cluster
Head Node (Controller)
• Manages job scheduling and resource allocation.
• Runs Slurm Controller Daemon (`slurmctld`).
Compute Nodes
• Execute computational tasks.
• Run Slurm Node Daemon (`slurmd`).
• Configured for CPUs, GPUs, or specialized hardware.
Networking
• High-speed interconnect like Infiniband or Ethernet.
• Ensures fast communication between nodes.
Storage
• Centralized storage like NFS, Lustre, or BeeGFS.
• Provides shared file access for all nodes.
Authentication
• Use Munge for secure communication between Slurm components.
Scheduler
• Slurm for job scheduling and resource management.
• Configured with partitions and node definitions.
Resource Management
• Use cgroups to control CPU, memory, and GPU usage.
• Optional: ProctrackType=cgroup in Slurm.
Parallel File System (Optional)
• High-performance shared storage for parallel workloads.
• Examples: Lustre, GPFS.
Interconnect Libraries
• MPI (Message Passing Interface) for distributed computing.
• Install libraries like OpenMPI or MPICH.
Monitoring and Debugging Tools
• Tools like Prometheus, Grafana, or Ganglia for resource monitoring.
• Enable verbose logging in Slurm for debugging.