HP XC System 3.x Software manual Node Specialization, Storage and I/O

Table 1-1 Determining the Node Platform

Platform	Partial Output of /proc/cpuinfo
CP3000	processor	: 0
	vendor_id	: GenuineIntel
	cpu family	: 15
	model	: 3
	model name	: Intel(R) Xeon(TM)
CP4000	processor	: 0
	vendor_id	: AuthenticAMD
	cpu family	: 15
	model	: 5
	model name	: AMD Opteron(tm)
CP6000	processor	: 0
	vendor	: GenuineIntel
	arch	: IA-64
	family	: Itanium 2
	model	: 1

Note

The /proc/cpuinfo file is dynamic.

Node Specialization

The HP XC system is implemented as a sea-of-nodes. Each node in the system contains the same software image on its local disk. There are two types of nodes in the system — a head node and client nodes.

head node	The node that is installed with the HP XC system software first — it is used to generate
	other HP XC (client) nodes. The head node is generally of interest only to the administrator
	of the HP XC system.
client nodes	All the other the nodes that make up the system. They are replicated from the head node
	and are usually given one or more specialized roles to perform various system functions,
	such as logging into the system or running jobs.

The HP XC system allows for the specialization of client nodes to enable efficient and flexible distribution of the workload. Nodes can be assigned one or more specialized roles that determine how a particular node is used and what system services it provides. Of the many different roles that can be assigned to a client node, the following roles contain services that are of special interest to the general user:

login role	The role most visible to users is on nodes that have the login role. Nodes with the login
	role are where you log in and interact with the system to perform various tasks. For
	example, once logged in to a node with login role, you can execute commands, build
	applications, or submit jobs to compute nodes for execution. There can be one or several
	nodes with the login role in an HP XC system, depending upon cluster size and
	requirements. Nodes with the login role are a part of the Linux Virtual Server ring, which
	distributes login requests from users. A node with the login role is referred to as a login
	node in this manual.
compute role	The compute role is assigned to nodes where jobs are to be distributed and run. Although
	all nodes in the HP XC system are capable of carrying out computations, the nodes with
	the compute role are the primary nodes used to run jobs. Nodes with the compute role
	become a part of the resource pool used by LSF-HPC and SLURM, which manage and
	distribute the job workload. Jobs that are submitted to compute nodes must be launched
	from nodes with the login role. Nodes with the compute role are referred to as compute
	nodes in this manual.

Storage and I/O

The HP XC system supports both shared (global) and private (local) disks and file systems. Shared file systems can be mounted on all the other nodes by means of Lustre or NFS. This gives users a single view of all the shared data on disks attached to the HP XC system.

20 Overview of the User Environment