The University of Manitoba’s Information & Services Technology (IST) department manages several research computing environments. The CC Compute Cluster is available to anyone who has a UofM computer account.

This compute environment presently consists of 15 Dell R815 servers arranged as follows:

• 3 login servers: Mars/Jupiter/Venus.cc.umanitoba.ca
  These 3 servers are also known as ccl.cc.umanitoba.ca (DNS round-robin)
• 12 compute servers: cc01, cc02,... cc12.cc.umanitoba.ca

We ask users to not run their compute-intensive jobs on the login servers. We reserve the right to kill any such jobs with little/no notice. Please see the Computationally-Intensive Processes Policy for more information.

Each server has 256 GB RAM and 4 AMD Interlagos processors, totalling 64 “virtual” cores (4 CPU/machine x 8 physical cores/CPU x 2 threads/core).

There is limited local disk on each; storage is provided via NFS. Users get a small default allocation of storage, but we will work directly with individuals or research groups to try to accommodate their storage needs. Send an email to servicedesk@umanitoba.ca with a request for the Unix team.

Access

The compute service is available to all employees and students of the UofM, but you require a valid UMNetID with the Unix/Linux entitlement claimed. If you already have your umnetid, you can check if you have the entitlement by trying to login to one of the login servers.

If you require help getting your account, or getting it set up for this access, you can send an email to servicedesk@umanitoba.ca explaining that you would like your account to have the Unix/Linux entitlement set. The Service Desk will also have information about sponsoring accounts should that be necessary.

Refer to Accessing CC Unix/Linux for information on the various ways of accessing the general CCL environment.

In summary, there are typically 3 ways to access the compute resources:

1. SSH
   
   • Using an SSH client (e.g. Putty), connect to ccl.cc.umanitoba.ca
   • If you have access to a Unix/Linux shell, use “ssh umnetid@ccl.cc.umanitoba.ca”
             Once you are logged on, you can use a similar approach to access the rest of the compute cluster.
2. The ThinLinc client gives you access to a full/graphical Linux desktop environment.
   From this desktop you can open terminals and manage jobs on multiple compute nodes using ssh (e.g. “ssh cc##.cc.umanitoba.ca”). Since the storage is provided via NFS, you will see your same home directory on both the login nodes as well as the compute nodes.
   More information on ThinLinc, including download links
3. ThinLinc web client
   ThinLinc is also available through a web interface: https://ccldesktop.cc.umanitoba.ca/
   It has fewer features, but it’s quick, easy, and supported on mobile devices.
   It is a good way to verify your access to the compute environment.
   ThinLinc desktop client

Batch Job Management

For researchers familiar with HPC resources: We do not presently have a batch/job scheduler. You need to login to the compute nodes, as described above, to launch your jobs.

You can use the “rupcc” command to get current utilization of the cluster nodes.

We do hope to eventually add a job scheduler to our compute cluster to handle resource contention, which we currently handle according to the Computationally-Intensive Processes policy.

More Information

If you have additional questions/feedback, please don’t hesitate to ask. Create an IT Ticket or send an email to servicedesk@umanitoba.ca with an info request for the Unix team.

• General information on CC Unix/Linux
• Information on quotas and workspaces
• More information on ThinLinc
• Listing of CC Unix/Linux servers and their current status
• Policy on Computationally-Intensive Processes

Other Research Computing resources available:

• WestGrid / Compute Canada HPC
• OpenStack computing environment