Hydra QuickStart Guide
About this QuickStart Guide
This QuickStart guide gives a brief overview of the WestGrid visualization facility (hydra.westrgrid.ca), highlighting some of the features that distinguish it from other WestGrid resources. It is intended to be read by new WestGrid account holders and by current users considering whether to move to the Hydra system. For more detailed information about the Hydra hardware and performance characteristics, available software, usage policies and how to log in and run jobs, follow the links given below. For more information on visualization in general, please refer to the WestGrid Visualization Page.
Introduction
Hydra is a grid resource that provides advanced visualization to WestGrid users. This allows users to connect to the server and use its advanced capabilities to render large data sets interactively from their desktops without having any special graphics hardware on their workstation. The images are sent back to the users desktop over the network and displayed on the desktop using a lightweight visualization client. The visualization server utilizes the WestGrid gigabit core network to deliver interactive visualization to the users desktop.
The visualization server is an SGI UltimateVision SMP machine with 24 MIPS processors and 10 ATI FireGL graphics cards. It uses SGIs VizServer software to provide interactive visualization and collaboration. Any visualization application that uses OpenGL and runs on the SGI can be run and displayed on the users desktop. A number of advanced visualization packages are installed on the visualization server, including AVS, OpenDX, and VTK. Like all of the WestGrid systems, a users WestGrid identity will allow access to the machine, and the standard WestGrid grid computing tools are installed. The machine is physically located in the machine room at the Centre for Interdiscplinary Research in the Mathematical and Computational Sciences (IRMACS) at Simon Fraser University.
Hardware
Architecture
- SGI Onyx UltimateVision
- 24 R1600 MIPS processors
- 14 GB RAM
- 10 ATI FireGL Graphics Pipes with 256 MB of texture memory each
- 5 Graphics Compositors
- 6 SGC DVI capture/video readback cards
Networking
Hydra is connected directly to the WestGrid core network via a gigabit network connection.
Storage
All user account home directories are mounted from the SFU storage facility. Therefore data stored on the storage facility can be accessed directly from Hydra.
Locally mounted storage:
- SGI TP9300 with 325 GB
NFS mounted storage from the WestGrid storage facility (including user's home directories):
- /vault - 3.2 TB
- /home - 6.6 TB
- /data - 4.3 TB
Software
See the main WestGrid software page for tables showing the installed software on Hydra and other WestGrid systems, including information about the operating system and compilers. For information on how to use the Visualization Server remote visualization software, please refer to the Using the Visialization Server page.
Using Hydra
To log in to Hydra, connect to hydra.westgrid.ca using an ssh (secure shell) client. For more information about connecting and setting up your environment, see the QuickStart for New Users.
Hydra is a grid resource that is targeted towards use for interactive visualization. Thus it is not scheduled like other WestGrid resources in the sense that there is no queueing system used to schedule jobs.
The machine currently has five licenses for the visualization server software. These licenses are available on a first-come, first-served basis. At this time, demand is such that the first-come, first-served scheduling policy is adequate. As the machine comes under heavier use a scheduling policy may need to be enforced. This scheduling will provide the ability to reserve certain graphics pipes for visualization at a certain time. It is expected that there will always be at least one, and possibly two pipes available for interactive, on demand use.
Usage of Hydra is monitored for abuse. In particular, the machine is not a computational machine and it is expected that users will not run long computational jobs on the machine directly. Because it is sometimes beneficial to run pre or post-processing on the visualization machine, this restriction can be relaxed on request.
Software environment
In order to make the basic software installed on hydra easier to use, a default Software and Demo menu structure has been created that enables users to easily run commonly used software as well as execute this software on demonstration data sets. This menu can be integrated into the normal SGI menu system (the toolchest) that you get when you log in to the machine. It can be used when directly logging on to hydra's console or when using the VizServer software.
To incorporate the menu into your toolchest you will need to change the .auxchestrc file in your home directory. If you do not have such a file, you will need to create it containing the lines listed below. If it already exists, you will need to add the lines displayed in bold to this file. The Demos line can be added to any Menu you choose as long as the sinclude line is included in the file as well. For more information on the structure of the toolchest menu see the toolchest man page on hydra.
Menu ToolChest
{
no-label f.separator
"Demos" f.menu Demos
}
sinclude /vizserverdata/demos/.auxchestrc-demos
For more information
For questions about usage of the hydra facility, please contact the WestGrid support team.
