Introduction to the PSI 64-bit Batch Cluster

Using the Cluster

Unlike the old Millennium cluster, jobs on the PSI Batch Cluster are arbitrated by the Torque PBS batch secheduler.  This change is due to results gathered from the 2006 EECS Computing Survey. Frontend node: zen.Millennium.Berkeley.EDU

MPI

If you are unfamiliar with MPI, please read our MPI Tutorial. MPI jobs can be run over gigabit ethernet using the P4 version. The PSI Batch cluster does not support Myrinet/GM.

Filesystems

While you should be able execute jobs from your EECS department home directory, we strongly suggest that you launch all jobs from a /work/$user directory. Before executing a program, copy all binaries and data files into your /work directory, cd into that directory, and execute from there. This avoids putting unnecessary load on EECS department fileservers, which are sometimes unable to handle many simultaneous mount requests.

Note: /work has a 30 day deletion policy. Any file not touched for 30 days will be deleted without warning. /work is meant for staging runs on the cluster, not for long-term storage. /work is never backed up.

Similarly, /scratch is available on every machine in the cluster. /scratch is high-speed RAID0 storage local to each machine and is intended for use for program check pointing. /scratch has a similar 10 day deletion policy.  Data left on compute nodes is never backed up.  With prior arrangement, the 10 day deletion policy can be adjusted or waived for PSI related projects.