Vienna Scientific Cluster
Update: The department doesn't own private nodes any more (you can still use the cluster in general, but without priority)! The information on this page is obsolete and will be updated for VSC-5 in the future.
Since 2014 there is a new cluster (VSC-3), so currently two systems, namely VSC-2 and VSC-3 can be used.
VSC2
VSC3
Access
The Faculty of Mathematics owns 36 nodes of the VSC-3. Each of these nodes has 16 cores and 64 GB RAM. To get access please contact the math:helpdesk with the following information:
- username (free to choose)
- a strong password (not dictionary based and at least: 10 characters, one digit, one lower case letter, one upper case letter and one of these special characters: '!@#$%^&*?_~(),-")
- first and last name
- your cellphone number (international format: e.g. +43...) to receive text messages (since the cluster works with 2FA)
If you don't feel comfortable with sending a password by email, please make an appointment with Thomas Leitner to get an account.
Once your account is created, you'll receive a confirmation email.
If you need more than our 36 nodes, please apply for a project.
Hardware
| VSC-3 | VSC-2 | |
|---|---|---|
| Year of acquisition | 2014 | 2011 |
| Manufacturer | ClusterVision | Megware |
| CPU | Intel Ivy Bridge Xeon E5-2650v2 | AMD Opteron Magny Cours 6132HE |
| Sockets per node | 2 | 2 |
| Clock rate | 2,6 GHz | 2,2 GHz |
| Number of nodes | 2020 | 1352 |
| Cores per node | 16 | 16 |
| Cores per cluster | 32320 | 21280 |
| Memory per core | 4 GB | 2 GB |
| Memory per node | 64 GB - 256 GB | 32 GB - 256 GB |
| Memory per cluster | 144 TB | 44,7 TB |
| Network | Intel Infiniband 4xQDR-80 | Mellanox Infiniband 4xQDR ConnectX-2 |
| Number of switches | 312 Infiniband + 50 Ethernet | 89 Infiniband + 65 Ethernet |
| Login-Server | 5 | 3 |
| Theoretical computing power | 672,3 TFlops/s | 190,4 TFlops/s |
| LINPACK benchmark | 596,01 TFlops/s | 152,9 TFlops/s |
| Initial entry on the Top 500 | 85 (Nov 2014) | 56 (June 2011) |
| Initial entry on the Green500 | 86 (Nov 2014) | 71 (June 2011) |
Software
The operating system of the VSC-3 is Scientific Linux, the job schedular is SLURM and there is Mathemtica 10.0.2 and Matlab v8.5_R2015a installed. Please check /opt/sw for various other software packages (or previous versions of these) or use
$ module avail
Login
Use ssh to connect to vsc3.vsc.ac.at (from the university network or VPN):
$ ssh yourloginname@vsc3.vsc.ac.at
After entering your cluster password you will be asked to enter your OTP which you will receive via sms (the OTP lasts 12 hours). Our 36 nodes will be immediatly aquired by the queueing system once you're logged in.
Runtime limit
The runtime limit in the all.q is 72 hours and in the long.q it is 168 hours. If a project's cpu time is exhausted, new jobs will receive a priority of zero and will be scheduled to the idle.q where the runtime limit is 24 hours.
Backup
There is no backup of your user data, you have to backup your data by yourself! Once there's no space left anymore on the /global file system, data older than about 180 days will be deleted.
Support
If you need further support please don't hesitate to contact the VSC support team.