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Upd:SuperMUC: scheduled maintenance Jan 28 31
by LRZ aktuell Feb. 1, 2013

Feb. 1, 2013

Changes to this message: Extended maintenance continues Update 3 (Feb 1 14:50): IBM is still investigating the cause of the problems observed in internal testing. It appears that there exists an incompatibility between one or more updated system software components. Therefore, no user operation can be expected for the weekend. We will update you on the status on Monday, Feb 4. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Update (Jan 30 afternoon): In order to check additional hardware and firmware modifications that were done to improve the stability of the system (see also http://www.lrz.de/services/compute/supermuc/aktuell/ ali4512/, as well as dedicated operation for a project that requires short-term use of the complete machine, user operation of the system is delayed to the afternoon of January 31. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Dear users of the SuperMUC petascale system at LRZ, Due to a combined hard- and software maintenance, SuperMUC will be unavailable for user operation between January 28, 8:00 and the afternoon of January 31. Jobs still running at the beginning of the maintenance will be cancelled. The following changes are introduced by this maintenance: * Access to the PRACE network will become available to PRACE users, * LoadLeveler mail notification will be activated, * Licence servers will be accessible from the compute nodes, * The Infiniband software stack will be updated to a newer release, * Some presently missing packages will become available on the compute nodes (e.g., you can remove the workaround for a missing libnuma.so) This information is also available on our web server http://www.lrz-muenchen.de/services/compute/supermuc/aktuell/ali4502/ Reinhold Bader

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Upd:Linux Cluster: Maintenance and Configuration Changes Jan 28 - Feb 1
by LRZ aktuell Feb. 1, 2013

Feb. 1, 2013

Changes to this message: Updated changes Maintenance windows Due to an extended hard- and software maintenance, the MPP, MAC and 8-way Myrinet clusters will be unavailable for user operation between Jan 28, 8:00 am and Feb 1. This includes the login nodes lxlogin1-2. ( Note: Until Jan 31, 8:00am, the lxlogin3.lrz.de system will remain available for submission of serial jobs.) All other cluster segments (serial cluster including all hosted systems, sgi ICE and UV systems, 32 way Myrinet systems) will be unavailable between Jan 31, 8:00 am and Feb 1. Configuration changes * The default MPI environment on the MPP cluster will be changed from Parastation MPI to Intel MPI. However, the mpi.parastation module will remain available for legacy use until the end of 2013. On the sgi ICE and UV systems, the sgi MPI (mpi.mpt) will remain default. * The 8-way Myrinet Cluster will be retired from parallel processing, and the nodes will be added to the serial processing pool. This implies that the partition "myri_std" in the SLURM cell "myri" will become unavailable. * For the serial queues, SLURM fair share scheduling will be introduced. For the parallel queues, a combination of fair share scheduling and favoring large jobs will be activated. This is to prevent a single user from monopolizing cluster segments for long times if there are many jobs in the queue. * New storage systems will be introduced for the WORK (==PROJECT) and SCRATCH file systems. Please note that LRZ will only migrate WORK data to the new file system; data in SCRATCH will not be migrated. However the old SCRATCH file system will remain available as a separate mount in read-only mode on the login nodes until the end of March, 2013. Migration of data can then be done via commands like cd $SCRATCH_LEGACY cp -a my_scratch_subdirectory $SCRATCH The environment variable $SCRATCH_LEGACY will remain defined and point to the legacy scratch area until end of March, 2013. Further configuration changes may occur and will be added to the above list if they are applied. This information is also available on our web server http://www.lrz-muenchen.de/services/compute/aktuell/ali4501/ Reinhold Bader

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Upd:SuperMUC: scheduled maintenance Jan 28 31
by LRZ aktuell Jan. 31, 2013

Jan. 31, 2013

Changes to this message: Prolongation of maintenance Update 2 (Jan 31 17:50): Internal testing unfortunately has revealed a number of problems that prevent us from returning the SuperMUC system to user operation. We intend to provide daily updates on the status of the system. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Update (Jan 30 afternoon): In order to check additional hardware and firmware modifications that were done to improve the stability of the system (see also http://www.lrz.de/services/compute/supermuc/aktuell/ ali4512/, as well as dedicated operation for a project that requires short-term use of the complete machine, user operation of the system is delayed to the afternoon of January 31. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Dear users of the SuperMUC petascale system at LRZ, Due to a combined hard- and software maintenance, SuperMUC will be unavailable for user operation between January 28, 8:00 and the afternoon of January 31. Jobs still running at the beginning of the maintenance will be cancelled. The following changes are introduced by this maintenance: * Access to the PRACE network will become available to PRACE users, * LoadLeveler mail notification will be activated, * Licence servers will be accessible from the compute nodes, * The Infiniband software stack will be updated to a newer release, * Some presently missing packages will become available on the compute nodes (e.g., you can remove the workaround for a missing libnuma.so) This information is also available on our web server http://www.lrz-muenchen.de/services/compute/supermuc/aktuell/ali4502/ Reinhold Bader

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Gauss Call #9 for Large Scale Projects
by LRZ aktuell Jan. 31, 2013

Jan. 31, 2013

Gauss Call #9 for Large-Scale Projects see also: Current call as PDF (http://www.gauss-centre.eu/datapool/page /71/GaussCall9.pdf) Large-scale projects and highly scalable parallel applications are characterised by large computing time requirements, not only for short time frames, but often for longer time periods. Projects are classified as Large-Scale , if they require, in general, more than 2% of the potentially available core cycles for GCS in one year on a member centre s high-end system, i.e. * more than 36 Mill. core-hours per year at JSC (IBM Blue Gene/Q), * more than 20 Mill. core-hours per year at LRZ (IBM iDataPlex SuperMUC), * more than 16 Mill. core-hours per year at HLRS (Cray HERMIT Step 1). For these large-scale projects a competitive review and resource allocation process is established by the GCS. Requests for resources below these limits will be accepted by the individual member centres. Requests above these limits will be handed over to GCS, handled according to the joint procedures, and will be reviewed in a national context. A "Call for Large-Scale Projects" is published by the Gauss Centre twice a year. Dates for closure of calls are usually at the end of winter and at the end of summer of each year. Eligible are applications from German universities and publicly funded German research institutions, e.g., Max-Planck Society, and Helmholtz Association. The deadline for the current call is: 28 February 2013, 17:00. Answering the Call Leading, ground-breaking projects should deal with complex, demanding, innovative simulations that would not be possible without the GCS infrastructure, and which can benefit from the exceptional resources provided by GCS. Application for a large-scale project should be performed by filling in the appropriate electronic application form that can be accessed from the GCS web page "Computing Time" (http://www.gauss-centre.eu/computing-time) Note that the regular application forms of the GCS member centres can be reached from there, and users are required to choose a centre that provides the architecture and software most appropriate for their programs. The proposals for large-scale projects will be first reviewed with respect to their technical feasibility. Afterwards, they will be peer-reviewed for a comparative scientific evaluation. On the basis of this evaluation by a GCS committee the projects will be approved for a period of one year and given their allocations. A project with a running large-scale grant on one of the centres or targeting multiple GCS platforms must clearly indicate and justify this as part of the application. Criteria for decision Applications for compute resources are evaluated only according to their scientific excellence. * The proposed scientific tasks must be scientifically challenging, and their treatment must be of substantial interest. * Clear scientific goals and verifiable milestones on the way to reach these goals must be specified. * The implementation of the project must be technically feasible on the available computing systems, and must be in reasonable proportion to the performance characteristics of these systems. * The Principal Investigator must have a proven scientific record, and she/he must be able to successfully accomplish the proposed tasks. In particular, applicants must possess the necessary specialized know-how for the effective use of high-end computing systems. This has to be proven in the application for compute resources, e.g. by presenting work done on smaller computing system, scaling studies etc. * The specific features of the high-end computers should be optimally exploited by the program implementations. This will be checked regularly during the course of the project. Application for Large-Scale Projects for SuperMUC Project applications for SuperMUC may be submitted by any scientist qualified in his or her respective field of research. Computing resources are allocated on the basis of independent referees' reports. Apart from the scientific relevance of the project, an important criterion for the allocation of computing resources is that the project can make efficient use of the computer and use a large number of processors in parallel for the simulations. Please, first prepare a detailed project description that you will have to upload to the electronic questionnaire as a pdf file. Follow the guidelines (https://www.gauss-centre.eu/computing-time/supermuc/ guidelines) about form, content and size of the project description. Take particular care that * the estimate of the applied computing time is verifiable by the reviewer, * a plot is supplied that shows the scalability of the program under realistic production conditions, and that * you provide information on computing projects and applications for computing time you have with other supercomputing centres. If you wish to add supplemental material to the project description (unpublished manuscripts etc.), please collect that in a second pdf-file. Also this file you will have to upload to the electronic questionnaire. Please fill in the electronic questionnnaire completely and attach the project description and - if necessary - the supplemental material as pdf files. * Electronic questionnaire (https://pound.zam.kfa-juelich.de/ lrz_projekt/) (open 30 January- 28 February 2013, 17:00) * Show, change, print electronic questionnaire (https:// pound.zam.kfa-juelich.de/lrz_prodis/) Please make sure that your data are complete and check them. Finally, please print the application form and send a signed paper copy to : GCS Large-Scale Projects c/o NIC Coordination office Juelich Supercomputing Centre Forschungszentrum Juelich 52425 Juelich Germany This information is also available on our web server http://www.lrz-muenchen.de/services/compute/supermuc/aktuell/ali4515/ Matthias Brehm

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Gauss Call #9 for Large-Scale Projects
by LRZ aktuell Jan. 30, 2013

Jan. 30, 2013

Gauss Call #9 for Large-Scale Projects see also: Current call as PDF (http://www.gauss-centre.eu/datapool/page /71/GaussCall9.pdf) Large-scale projects and highly scalable parallel applications are characterised by large computing time requirements, not only for short time frames, but often for longer time periods. Projects are classified as Large-Scale , if they require, in general, more than 2% of the potentially available core cycles for GCS in one year on a member centre s high-end system, i.e. * more than 36 Mill. core-hours per year at JSC (IBM Blue Gene/Q), * more than 20 Mill. core-hours per year at LRZ (IBM iDataPlex SuperMUC), * more than 16 Mill. core-hours per year at HLRS (Cray HERMIT Step 1). For these large-scale projects a competitive review and resource allocation process is established by the GCS. Requests for resources below these limits will be accepted by the individual member centres. Requests above these limits will be handed over to GCS, handled according to the joint procedures, and will be reviewed in a national context. A "Call for Large-Scale Projects" is published by the Gauss Centre twice a year. Dates for closure of calls are usually at the end of winter and at the end of summer of each year. Eligible are applications from German universities and publicly funded German research institutions, e.g., Max-Planck Society, and Helmholtz Association. The deadline for the current call is: 28 February 2013, 17:00. Answering the Call Leading, ground-breaking projects should deal with complex, demanding, innovative simulations that would not be possible without the GCS infrastructure, and which can benefit from the exceptional resources provided by GCS. Application for a large-scale project should be performed by filling in the appropriate electronic application form that can be accessed from the GCS web page "Computing Time" (http://www.gauss-centre.eu/computing-time) Note that the regular application forms of the GCS member centres can be reached from there, and users are required to choose a centre that provides the architecture and software most appropriate for their programs. The proposals for large-scale projects will be first reviewed with respect to their technical feasibility. Afterwards, they will be peer-reviewed for a comparative scientific evaluation. On the basis of this evaluation by a GCS committee the projects will be approved for a period of one year and given their allocations. A project with a running large-scale grant on one of the centres or targeting multiple GCS platforms must clearly indicate and justify this as part of the application. Criteria for decision Applications for compute resources are evaluated only according to their scientific excellence. * The proposed scientific tasks must be scientifically challenging, and their treatment must be of substantial interest. * Clear scientific goals and verifiable milestones on the way to reach these goals must be specified. * The implementation of the project must be technically feasible on the available computing systems, and must be in reasonable proportion to the performance characteristics of these systems. * The Principal Investigator must have a proven scientific record, and she/he must be able to successfully accomplish the proposed tasks. In particular, applicants must possess the necessary specialized know-how for the effective use of high-end computing systems. This has to be proven in the application for compute resources, e.g. by presenting work done on smaller computing system, scaling studies etc. * The specific features of the high-end computers should be optimally exploited by the program implementations. This will be checked regularly during the course of the project. Application for Large-Scale Projects for SuperMUC Project applications for SuperMUC may be submitted by any scientist qualified in his or her respective field of research. Computing resources are allocated on the basis of independent referees' reports. Apart from the scientific relevance of the project, an important criterion for the allocation of computing resources is that the project can make efficient use of the computer and use a large number of processors in parallel for the simulations. Please, first prepare a detailed project description that you will have to upload to the electronic questionnaire as a pdf file. Follow the guidelines (https://www.gauss-centre.eu/computing-time/supermuc/ guidelines) about form, content and size of the project description. Take particular care that * the estimate of the applied computing time is verifiable by the reviewer, * a plot is supplied that shows the scalability of the program under realistic production conditions, and that * you provide information on computing projects and applications for computing time you have with other supercomputing centres. If you wish to add supplemental material to the project description (unpublished manuscripts etc.), please collect that in a second pdf-file. Also this file you will have to upload to the electronic questionnaire. Please fill in the electronic questionnnaire completely and attach the project description and - if necessary - the supplemental material as pdf files. * Electronic questionnaire (https://pound.zam.kfa-juelich.de/ lrz_projekt/) (open 30 January- 28 February 2013, 17:00) * Show, change, print electronic questionnaire (https:// pound.zam.kfa-juelich.de/lrz_prodis/) Please make sure that your data are complete and check them. Finally, please print the application form and send a signed paper copy to : GCS Large-Scale Projects c/o NIC Coordination office Juelich Supercomputing Centre Forschungszentrum Juelich 52425 Juelich Germany Diese Information finden Sie im WWW unter http://www.lrz-muenchen.de/services/compute/hlrb/aktuell/ali4514/ Matthias Brehm

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Upd:SuperMUC: scheduled maintenance Jan 28 31
by LRZ aktuell Jan. 30, 2013

Jan. 30, 2013

Changes to this message: Additional time needed for testing Update: In order to check additional hardware and firmware modifications that were done to improve the stability of the system (see also http://www.lrz.de/services/compute/supermuc/aktuell/ali4512/, as well as dedicated operation for a project that requires short-term use of the complete machine, user operation of the system is delayed to the afternoon of January 31. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Dear users of the SuperMUC petascale system at LRZ, Due to a combined hard- and software maintenance, SuperMUC will be unavailable for user operation between January 28, 8:00 and the afternoon of January 31. Jobs still running at the beginning of the maintenance will be cancelled. The following changes are introduced by this maintenance: * Access to the PRACE network will become available to PRACE users, * LoadLeveler mail notification will be activated, * Licence servers will be accessible from the compute nodes, * The Infiniband software stack will be updated to a newer release, * Some presently missing packages will become available on the compute nodes (e.g., you can remove the workaround for a missing libnuma.so) This information is also available on our web server http://www.lrz-muenchen.de/services/compute/supermuc/aktuell/ali4502/ Reinhold Bader

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TSM-Kernel-Update am 04.02.2013 von 12 Uhr bis ca. 14 Uhr
by LRZ aktuell Jan. 30, 2013

Jan. 30, 2013

Wegen eines dringenden Kernel-Updates sind die TSM-Server S39 - S56, S60, S62, S65, S67-S68 am Montag, den 04.02.2013 in der Zeit von 12:00 bis ca. 14:00 Uhr jeweils fuer ca. 30 Minuten nicht verfuegbar. Zudem wird es in dieser Zeit eine 30 minuetige Unterbrechung bei den Tape-Mounts des SuperMUC Archivs (T68I1 - T68I4, T69I1 - T69I4) geben. Wir bitten um Ihr Verstaendnis. Due to a high-urgency kernel update the TSM servers S39 - S56, S60, S62, S65, S67-S68 will be unavailable for approximately half an hour on Monday, Feb 4, 2013, between 12:00 and ca 14:00. During this time, tape mounts will not be executed for half an hour also on the SuperMUC archive (servers T68I1 - T68I4, T69I1 - T69I4). With apologies for the disruption. Ihr ABS-Team Diese Information finden Sie im WWW unter http://www.lrz-muenchen.de/services/datenhaltung/adsm/aktuell/ali4513/ Monika Hufnagl

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SuperMUC: On the way to resolving the stability issues
by LRZ aktuell Jan. 30, 2013

Jan. 30, 2013

Dear users of the SuperMUC Petaflop system, As known to many of you, we have encountered significant stability issues on the system throughout the last months, not all of which were resolved up to January 2013. These problems particularly impact large jobs, as well as jobs that highly stress the I/O subsystems, especially GPFS. Investigation of the causes for these instabilities has progressed to a point that allows us to provide information on IBM s and LRZ s plans for significant improvement of operational stability. Issue 1: Occasional switch outages caused by a race condition in the management part of the switch logic. This issue will be fixed during the Jan 28-31 maintenance phase. Issue 2: A relatively high number of Infiniband cables has shown degradation or failure. While the exact cause is still under investigation, the prime suspect is a too high temperature in some parts of the air-cooled switch infrastructure that will be resolved by increasing the fan speeds, to be implemented during the Jan 28-31 maintenance phase. Also, the defective cables will be replaced. Issue 3: The hard disks underlying the GPFS are not designed for uninterrupted high-bandwidth I/O and may degrade in performance over time if overstressed. Given the I/O profiles we observe, this is not an issue if such disks are automatically retired from usage once the problem arises, and then exchanged. However, this automatism inside the storage does not presently work for some scenarios. Unfortunately, even a small number of slow disks will considerably slow down the complete file system. At present, manual disk reviews are done in short intervals to alleviate this problem; we expect that a full solution to the problem will become available within a few weeks. Given the above, considerable stability improvements should already be observable once the system is returned to regular operation after the above-mentioned maintenance. Please provide feedback (via our Service Desk) as soon as possible if you feel this not to be the case, and also if you already have an incident ticket open at our site. This information is also available on our web server http://www.lrz-muenchen.de/services/compute/supermuc/aktuell/ali4512/ Reinhold Bader

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Upd:Netzwartung am 29.1.
by LRZ aktuell Jan. 28, 2013

Jan. 28, 2013

Aenderungen an der Mitteilung: Mit mehr Details TUM Nordgelaende Gebaeude N6 Zwischen 8:00 Uhr und 9:00 Uhr wird der Switch swz1-kb6 ausgetauscht. Vorankuendigung: In den naechsten Monaten werden wir die Backbone-Router im MWN auf eine neue Hardware-Plattform (Cisco Nexus 7000) migrieren, um fuer Bandbreiten von 40 und 100 Gbit/s geruestet zu sein. Die Ersetzung der einzelnen Router wird voraussichtlich nicht ganz ohne Unterbrechungen des Netzbetriebs moeglich sein. Die Gebaeude-uebergreifende Kommunikation und Verbindungen ins Internet werden zeitweise ausfallen. Der vorgesehene Zeitplan sieht so aus: csr1-kic 12.02.2013 Campus Grosshadern/Martinsried csr1-kra 19.02.2013 Hochschule Muenchen csr1-kw5 26.02.2013 Campus Garching csr2-kb1 05.03.2013 TUM Stammgelaende, Telekom LWL-Anbindungen csr1-kb1 12.03.2013 TUM Stammgelaende, Telekom LWL-Anbindungen csr1-1wr 23.04.2013 Supermuc (redundant) csr2-2wr 30.04.2013 Supermuc (redundant) csr1-0rr 07.05.2013 Hochschule Muenchen (neu, redundant) csr1-0gz 23.07.2013 LMU Muenchen, M-net LWL- und DSL-Anbindungen vss1-2wr 30.07.2013 LRZ Rechenzentrumsnetz csr1-2wr 06.08.2013 LRZ Rechenzentrumsnetz, X-WiN-Anbindung csr1-0q1 13.08.2013 Campus Weihenstephan Vor den einzelnen Terminen werden wir Sie noch genauer informieren. Diese Information finden Sie im WWW unter http://www.lrz-muenchen.de/services/netz/aktuell/ali4509/ Wolfgang Beyer

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[Vortraege] Supercomputer-Anwendungen + Sicherheitsprobleme in virtualisierten Umgebungen
by LRZ aktuell Jan. 28, 2013

Jan. 28, 2013

Im Rahmen der Vortragsreihe Professioneller IT-Betrieb in mittleren und grossen Umgebungen sind Sie am Do. 31.1.2013 zu den folgenden Vortraegen herzlich eingeladen (Anmeldung nicht erforderlich). ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Supercomputer ihre Anwendungen und die Herausforderungen dabei Dr. Matthias Brehm (LRZ) Hoechstleistungsrechnen hat sich zu einer Schluesseltechnologie in den Natur- und Ingenieurwissenschaften entwickelt. Die Anforderungen an Rechenleistung steigen enorm; so hat das Leibniz-Rechenzentrum (LRZ) gerade den "SuperMUC" beschafft den ersten Rechner mit mehr als einem PetaFlop/s Leistung (10 hoch 15 Rechenoperationen pro Sekunde). Der Vortrag wird Entwicklungen bei den Anwendungen, der Software und der Hardware der Rechensystem beleuchten und die Schwierigkeiten bei zukuenftigen Systemen, insbesondere bezueglich der Anforderungen an Energieeffizienz und und Skalierbarkeit, darstellen. ------------------------------------------ Herr Brehm ist Leiter der Gruppe Hochleistungsrechnen am LRZ und dort fuer die Benutzer- und Applikationsunterstuetzung zustaendig. [Beginn: 15:15 Uhr, Dauer: 45 Minuten] ----------------------------------------------------------------------- How Security Controls Fail In Virtualized (Multi-Tenant) Environments Matthias Luft, Michael Schaefer (ERNW Enno Rey Netzwerke GmbH) Die schnelle Verbreitung (neuer) Cloud-Umgebungen, -Dienste und -Architekturen hat sowohl neue IT-Moeglichkeiten eroeffnet, als auch die Risiko-Landschaft ganzer IT-Umgebungen relevant veraendert. Waehrend sich aktuell ein besseres Verstaendnis der Sicherheits-Herausforderungen, die Cloud Computing mit sich bringt, entwickelt, existieren immer noch viele traditionelle Sicherheitsmodelle und -massnahmen, die sich nicht auf Cloud-Umgebungen anwenden lassen und doch angewendet werden. Dieser Vortrag verdeutlicht die Notwendigkeit eines angepassten Sicherheitsmodells fuer Cloud-Umgebungen, indem wir demonstrieren, wie diese durch falsche Annahmen und falsch angewendete Massnahmen aus der "alten IT-Welt" verwundbar werden. Dabei werden wir ebenfalls eine durch uns aufgedeckte Input Validation-Schwachstelle technisch erlaeutern, die zu einer kompletten Kompromittierung von Hypervisor -Systemen in VMware-Umgebungen fuehren kann. Der Vortrag wird auf Englisch gehalten. | The talk will be given in English. ------------------------------------------ Matthias Luft ist ein erfahrener Auditor und Pentester mit umfassender Erfahrung in (grossen bis sehr grossen) Unternehmen. Im Rahmen umfangreicher Pruefprojekte hat er seinen eigenen Ansatz fuer die Evaluierung verschiedenster Applikationen, Technologien und Sicherheitskonzepte entwickelt. Er ist einer der ersten Securityforscher, der kritische Luecken und Design-Schwaechen in DLP-Loesungen aufgezeigt hat. Waehrend der letzten Jahr hat er sich auf das Gebiet der Cloud-Security fokussiert und sowohl Ansaetze fuer die Messung der Skalierbarkeit als auch des Trust- Assessments vorgestellt. Er spricht regelmaessig auf internationalen Sicherheitskonferenzen. [Beginn: 16:05 Uhr, Dauer: 45 Minuten] ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Termin: Do. 31.1.2013 von 15:15 bis 17:00 Uhr Ort: LRZ-Gebaeude; hinsichtlich des Raums siehe das Hinweis-Schild am Eingang Vortragsreihe: Weitere Informationen (u.a. das komplette Programm und Kurzfassungen aller Vortraege): www.lrz.de/vr-it-betrieb /wise_12_13/ Diese Information finden Sie im WWW unter http://www.lrz-muenchen.de/services/schulung/aktuell/ali4511/ Ernst Boetsch

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