Computational Cluster Programs

Announcing the New Hoffman2 Cluster

IDRE and ATS are very pleased to anounce the availability of the brand new and very powerful Hoffman2 Cluster.

The Hoffman2 Cluster, which is the foundation of the IDRE Shared Cluster System, offers the following facilities to general UCLA campus users:

  • The Campus General Purpose Cluster for Parallel Computing

    This portion of the Hoffman2 Cluster, which has been set aside for for campus use, is intended for the running of parallel programs. It consists of 40 dual-CPU dual-core 2.0GHz AMD Opteron (64-bit) nodes (160 cores) that have InfiniBand interconnects for message passing and gigabit Ethernet connections to the storage system.

  • Two Interactive Nodes

    Two interactive nodes, identical to the General Purpose nodes, for application testing and interactive use.

  • The Application Cluster

    The application cluster consists of 10 dual quad-core Intel (64-bit) nodes (80 cores). All ATS-supplied applications will run here. You are also encouraged to run your own serial applications on the application cluster as it does not have the InfiniBand interconnect.

  • Home directories and temporary scratch space served from the BlueArc Titan high-performance fault-tolerant storage server

For more information on the Hoffman2 Cluster's hardware see Hoffman2 Cluster Hardware.

The Hoffman2 Cluster represents a significant increase in compute capacity and services over any cluster previously built on the UCLA campus. In addition to providing for campus users, the Hoffman2 Cluster is the foundation of the IDRE Cluster Hosting Program. Accordingly, a number of research groups have already purchased nodes (virtual clusters) and added them to the Hoffman2 Cluster, considerably increasing the compute capacity beyond that listed above. It is anticipated that the Hoffman2 Cluster will grow to 1600 nodes over the next several years.

The Old Hoffman Cluster to be Decommissioned

All Hoffman Cluster users should transition to the the Hoffman2 Cluster immediately after January 28.

Take the following steps to transition to the Hoffman2 Cluster as soon as it becomes available:

  • Add your login id to the Hoffman2 Cluster.

  • Copy all the files from you home directory on the Hoffman Cluster to your new home directory on the Hoffman2 Cluster. Once you have been notified that your login id has been added to the Hoffman2 Cluster, login to the Hoffman Cluster and from your home directory there enter the command:
    tar -cpzf - * | ssh your_login_id@login1.hoffman2.idre.ucla.edu tar -xpzf -

    Replace your_login_id with your Hoffman2 Cluster login id.

    Note that this transfer will NOT copy any of the hidden (dot) files from your home directory on the Hoffman Cluster to your new home directory on the Hoffman2 Cluster. Since many of the dot files in your home directory are operating system version specific, it would not be appropriate to transfer these files.

    After the transfer completes logoff of the Hoffman Cluster.

After transfering your files, use the Hoffman2 Cluster for all future work.