• A 1.5GHz quad-core 64-bit ARM Cortex-A72 CPU (~3× performance)
• 1GB, 2GB, or 4GB of LPDDR4 SDRAM
• Full-throughput Gigabit Ethernet
• Dual-band 802.11ac wireless networking
• Bluetooth 5.0
• Two USB 3.0 and two USB 2.0 ports
• Dual monitor support, at resolutions up to 4K
• VideoCore VI graphics, supporting OpenGL ES 3.x
• 4Kp60 hardware decode of HEVC video

OS: Raspbian Buster Lite

• Minimal image based on Debian Buster 10
• Version: July 2019
• Release Date: 2019-07-10
• Kernel Version: 4.19.57
• Size: 426 MB
• SHA-256: 9e5cf24ce483bb96e7736ea75ca422e3560e7b455eee63dd28f66fa1825db70e
• Package Manager: Apt
• Configuration Details
• Preinstalled Software
• Pros:
  • Rasbian is the official linux distribution for Pis. While other linux distributions support the Pi unofficially, our team did not find sufficient comparative advantage justify the loss of official support.
  • Rasbian is a minimal installation. Other officially supported OS's, like NOOBS, come bundled with extraneous software that is unessential to the cluster. A major goal of Flamboyant is training team members in cluster construction and management. For this reason, starting from a minimal installation is preferable.
  • We are most comfortable with Debian. Some team members even have linux experience exclusively with Debian and Ubuntu.
  • Rasbian is stable. Debian updates rarely, meaning that a known good configuration will stay good for a long time.
• Cons:
  • Comet uses CentOS Due to the changed OS, there will be some minor differences compared to our experience working with the Comet cluster.
  • Rasbian is stable. Cutting edge features and security patches will be more difficult to obtain if required compared with other linux distributions.
  • Rasbian is the default There may be a much more advantageous OS out there.

Scheduling: SLURM

• Version:
  • 19.05.1-2
    • md5: 35aa79ab7830f5914d6863957089d1f2
    • sha1: 1b43cdf3382889c1716c22c0c52efa53fce6dfe6
  • 18.08.8
    • md5: ca5d91345415363a60b40c26631c7572
    • sha1: 4a2c176b54a56763704bcc7abfd9b8a4f91c82b8
• Release Date 07-10-19
• Supported OS: Debian (jessie, stretch, buster, and newer)
• Documentation
• Pros:
  • SLURM schedules jobs Slurm allows many users to leverage the cluster without crowding each other out.
  • SLURM is used on Comet Our advisors have a wealth of experience in configuring this scheduler.
  • SLURM is commonly used on supercomputing clusters It occupies some 60% of supercomputers in the TOP500.
• Cons:
  • SLURM is CLI by default The undergraduates and visual arts people who are expected to use Flamboyant will be required by default to submit jobs on the command line.
  • SLURM is asynchronous Slurm will make Flamboyant ill suited to certain types of real-time interactive jobs. Generated visual media will have to be stored. This is partially mitigated by the reservation of interactive nodes.
  • SLURM has overhead in terms of computing power and configuration complexity Slurm does not pay for itself if too few people use Flamboyant. This is mitigated by the educational advantages of comfiguring Slurm.

Monitoring: Grafana

• Version: 6.3.2
• Release Date: 08-07-2019
• Documentation
• Integration
• Pros:
  • Grafana monitors nodes Grafana enables analysis and optimization of the cluster.
  • Grafana is visual Grafana has lots of pretty graphs and dashboards to present to tourists and patrons.
• Cons:
  • Grafana runs a daemon on every node There will be a performance penalty.
  • Grafana requires a central server A Pi or some other computer will have allocated to the cluster and installed with a GUI to act as the Grafana server. Alternatively, a cloud server may be purchased.

Remote Access

• Pros:
  • Team members may contribute without being on campus There are some members who cannot frequently travel to SDSC, some are even out of the country.
• Cons:
  • Open access Remote access is a substantial attack vector and greatly increases our vulnerability surface.

Containers:

• Singularity:
  • Version: 3.3
  • Release Date: 07-31-19
  • Documentation
  • Pros:
    • Singularity is a container Singularity allows user applications to run with dependencies that are not installed on the base system.
    • Singularity lengthens the lifespan of known good configurations System administration is not necessarily required to modify cluster images when a software package updates.
  • Cons:
    • Singularity has computational overhead Applications run slower in Singularity.
    • Singularity makes job creation more complicated Users who's applications require extra dependencies must bundle their jobs into singularity containers. This places an additional barrier to entry.
• Docker (via Singularity)
  • Community Edition for Debian
  • Install via script
  • Prerequisites
    • 64-bit version of either Buster 10 or Stretch 9 (stable)/Raspbian Stretch
  • Pros:
    • Docker is more popular than Singularity Users are more likely to be familar with container creation. It is easier to find pre-built containers for a particular job.
  • Cons:
    • Docker has computational overhead Yo Dawg, I heard you like containers, so we put a container in a container for even less performance.

File System: Lustre

• Version: 2.10.8/2.12.2
• Release Date: 05-27-19
• Documentation
• 64-bit architectures are recommended for servers
• Supports Ethernet and InfiniBand networks
• Pros:
  • Lustre grants uniform storage access from any node Jobs can access and store files without explicitly transfering data between nodes.
  • Lustre allows nodes to be reset between jobs Jobs can be expected to store results on the Lustre filesystem.
• Cons:
  • Lustre increases network load Data is sent over the network to the storage servers.
  • Lustre increases configuration complexity Lustre requires a metadata server and object storage server to be provisioned, among other things.