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| About the University |
| A world leader in Engineering and Physical Sciences, the University of Leicester funds its High Performance Computing cluster to provide students, fellows and international researchers with solutions for challenging problems which require advanced computer power. Firstly, ALICE, one of the most powerful systems in a UK University, is optimised for providing maximum performance for the most demanding data processing, data analysis and simulation tasks such as those within the fields of genetics, physics, engineering and biology. Secondly, SPECTRE, which provides an interactive Linux environment combined with a smaller HPC cluster, is available for all staff and students at the university of Leicester and is used primarily for teaching and small research projects. Average usage typically sees between 5000 and 25000 jobs being executed and visualized at any given time. |
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| The Challenge |
| With over 600 researchers registered for the ALICE service, and SPECTRE being available to all university staff and students (10000+), the University needed a remote access technology that would not only permit users to actively engage in on-demand programming and data analysis jobs, but would provide superior speed and robust session reliability. Fundamental was a load-balanced solution which would guarantee access to persistent virtual Linux desktop sessions from which users can then compile and submit experiments to the compute nodes on one of the clusters via the job scheduler. The use of graphically intense interactive applications in addition to large CUDA simulations meant support for VirtualGL to allow for remote visualization, also in real-time, was an important pre-requisite. |
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| The Solution |
| Enterprise Server version 5 functions as a load-balanced gateway giving access to NoMachine Terminal Server Nodes running on the ALICE and SPECTRE cluster login nodes. These in turn give access to 208 and 24 compute nodes respectively. Both clusters are connected by a high performance Infiniband QDR network fabric providing support for large distributed jobs. Attached via this network is a parallel file system with just over 1TB of high performance storage. |
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| Results |
| NoMachine allows users to run unlimited persistent, virtual desktop sessions on the login nodes, which they use for user supplied codes, generating and submitting jobs and visualization of results. Typically during the day there are between 100 and 160 users with active desktops being run via NoMachine split between the login nodes. Users connect to either the ALICE or SPECTRE Enterprise Server, their desktop session is then automatically started on one of the Terminal Servers on the login nodes, with the Enterprise Server providing the load balancing. |
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| Networking Environment |
Key Benefits |
Applications Delivered |
NoMachine Enterprise Server v.5
NoMachine Terminal Server Nodes v.5
Scientific Linux 6 |
Load-balancing
VirtualGL support
Extremely functional
Session persistence
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Visualization software
Data simulation
Data analysis |
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| About NoMachine Enterprise Server |
| Create pools of Mac, Windows and Linux desktops and federate them under a single point of entry to centralize user access. NoMachine Enterprise Server provides multi-node support, load balancing and built-in cluster capabilities, with automatic failover in the case of a server outage. |
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