HPC Ecosystems OpenHPC 2.x (Virtual Lab #08)

16 Feb 2024, 12:30 → 4 Mar 2024, 18:30 Africa/Johannesburg

Bryan Johnston (CHPC), Lara Timm (CSIR)

The HPC Ecosystems Project will be hosting the second OpenHPC2 virtual training lab. 

This FREE training lab is hosted quarterly and is a virtual training workshop for HPC System Administrators to gain hands-on experience with deploying a three-node virtual cluster using the OpenHPC2.x software stack.

Using Vagrant and VirtualBox, the virtual cluster will be deployed on participants' own machines and remain available for future development and practice.

All interaction is facilitated through a virtual classroom, with the learning material provided as an online guide.

The course material is estimated to take 15-20 hours of hands-on time to complete, with the course being open for a period of just over two weeks (with three weekends).

Pre-Requisites -- it is suggested that participants have experience and a basic understanding of:

• HPC concepts (from a System Administrator's perspective):
  • What is HPC
  • Why HPC
  • HPC hardware
  • Parallel Computing Concepts
  • Software Compilation
  • Material presented by the CHPC's Student Cluster Competition is sufficient to meet this requirement, available here: Introduction to HPC for System Administrators.docx

The workshop will concentrate on a guided hands-on OpenHPC deployment that is officially supported by the CHPC's HPC Ecosystems and SADC community.

At the end of the deployment process, a fully functional Management Server will be operational as a VM, and can be migrated to a physical system, or used as-is to manage a physical HPC cluster, or to perform future HPC-related training and learning.

Content will be delivered asynchronously:

• OpenHPC 1.3 Training Videos are hosted on YouTube (NOTE: at this stage the OpenHPC2.x videos are not yet available).
• Collaborative Virtual Classroom environment (Piazza, EdSTEM or similar) where all participants will be encouraged to participate collaboratively through the workshop.

The format of the programme is designed to accommodate all partner institutions in any timezone, with participants of any experience or background (provided the foundational reference material is reviewed in the case of complete new-comers to HPC) with any time availability or workload commitments. 

You do not need an operational HPC system to perform this training - everything will be run on your local machine (desktop or laptop). There are 100's of participants who have all successfully run the 3-node virtual cluster on their local machines, but if you experience resource constraints, we will do our best to investigate and assist.

In extreme circumstances of low or unreliable internet connectivity, there are mechanisms to perform the lab entirely offline in your own time, although we will unfortunately not be able to facilitate this during the official virtual lab - please contact us for further information and assistance if you are faced with connectivity issues that prevent you from participating fully in the official virtual lab.

Please note: there is no cost to participate.

Purpose for the collection of personal data:

• To make contact with you with any matters regarding this course;
• Information on your technical background is used to determine if you are eligible to participate in this event;
• To report to the Departments of Higher Education and Training, Science and Innovation, and the Services Sector Education and Training Authority (SETA);

We look forward to sharing this learning journey with you!