About this QuickStart Guide

This QuickStart guide gives a brief overview of the WestGrid Nexus facility, 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 Nexus system. For more detailed information about the Nexus hardware and performance characteristics, available software, usage policies and how to log in and run jobs, follow the links given below.

Introduction

Nexus is a head node to a collection of 5 SGI SMP machines ranging from 8 up to 256 MIPS processorsof of varying speeds, and with varying memory sizes - all running SGI Irix operatin system. This system is suitable for large parallel applications that require shared memory and/or fast interconnection. The larger machines will be restricted to jobs requiring a large number of processors, and/or large memory. Users may only login to the head node nexus.westgrid.ca. For all the other machines, jobs must be submitted to the batch scheduling system on Nexus. The machines in this complex are: Nexus (8), Helios (32), Australis (58), Borealis (64) and Arcturus (256) .

Hardware

For detailed information about the harware configuration of the nodes, please go to here.

Host: Nexus

Nexus is a SGI Origin model 350 with 8 MIPS 700 MHz IP35 processors and 8Gb of main memory.

Host: Helios

Helios is a SGI Origin model 300 with 16 MIPS 500 MHz IP35 processors and  8 Gb of main memory.

Host: Australis

Australis is a SGI Origin model 3800 with 32 MIPS 400 MHz IP35 processors and 14 Gb of main memory.

Host: Borealis

Borealis is a SGI Origin model 2400 with 39 MIPS 400 MHz IP27 processors and 10 Gb of main memory.

Host: Arcturus

Arcturus is SGI Origin model 3900 with 240 MIPS 700 MHz IP35 processors and 238 Gb of main memory

Storage

All the hosts are sharing total of 5.5 Tb disk space allocated in 3 scratch filesystems. Nexus is sharing additional 1.3 Tb with Hydra (visualization facility). For detailed information about the harware configuration of the nodes, please go to here.

Software

See the main WestGrid software page for tables showing the installed software on Nexus and other WestGrid systems, including information about the operating system and compilers.

Using Nexus

To log in to Nexus, connect to nexus.westgrid.ca using an ssh (secure shell) client. For more information about connecting and setting up your environment, see the QuickStart Guide for New Users.

Nexus can be used during development for interactive runs on maximum 2 processors for up to 60 minutes of CPU time.
As on other WestGrid systems batch jobs are handled by a combination of TORQUE and Moab software.
The maximum per job walltime limit at Nexus is 24 hours.

For more information about submitting jobs, see the general Running Jobs page and some Nexus-specific notes.