Archer:Hands-on tutorial
From Grid-Appliance Wiki
Contents |
Getting started with the Grid Appliance
First off, go through the generic first-time user's tutorial of the Grid appliance by following the instructions from the Grid appliance portal. This will guide you through the basics of VM installation, appliance download and use, and Condor.
Archer Express: running your first computer architecture jobs
SESC simulation example
This is a short-running parameter sweeping example using the SESC multi-processor simulator to illustrate how Condor can efficiently handle the submission of architecture jobs.
To run this example:
- download the sesc_demo.tgz file; drag it to the appliance network folder in your host as described in the quick start guide, or download it directly to the appliance with the commands:
sudo wget http://www.acis.ufl.edu/~ipop/files/apps/sesc_demo.tgz sudo chown griduser sesc_demo.tgz
- Within the appliance, expand the archive using the command:
tar -xzf sesc_demo.tgz cd sesc_demo
- Check the instructions on the README.txt file to submit the demonstration job:
This example is based on a homework assignment in Milos Prvulovic's CS6290 class at Georgia Tech: http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~milos/CS6290F07 It submits three SESC simulations using three different configuration files, running a MIPS crafty application. To run it, type: condor_submit submit_sesc.condor While the jobs are running, take a look at the submit file above to see how you can configure Condor to run your own simulation jobs. This configuration example submits three jobs, where the different jobs run for different block sizes (32, 64 and 128 bytes) as specified in the sesc*.conf files Also, follow the progress of your jobs with condor_q and condor_status. These jobs will take a few minutes to complete. When they are done, inspect the sesc*.out (the output from the application) sesc*.err (the standard error for the job) as well as the sesc_crafty.mipseb.* files (the actual simulation outputs). Type the following to see the differences among the three output files: grep bsize sesc_crafty.mipseb* grep L2:readHit sesc_crafty.mipseb*
Cacti simulation example
This is a short-running parameter sweeping example using the Cacti cache access time simulator to illustrate how Condor can efficiently handle the submission of parameter sweeping jobs.
To run this example:
- download the cacti.tgz file; drag it to the appliance network folder in your host as described in the quick start guide, or download it directly to the appliance with the commands:
sudo wget http://www.acis.ufl.edu/~ipop/files/apps/cacti.tgz sudo chown griduser cacti.tgz
- Within the appliance, expand the archive using the command:
tar -xzf cacti.tgz
- Check the instructions on the README.txt file to submit the demonstration job:
This is an example of running a parametric sweep job with Condor. The application is cacti, a cache access time simulator. It's a short-running application used for purposes of demonstrating the basic Condor functionality - in practice, you will typically use Condor for applications which execute for hours or days. The application takes a few arguments as input: cache size, block size, associativity, feature size and number of sub-banks. To submit the demonstration job (which runs 8 cacti instances): condor_submit submit_cacti Use condor_q and condor_status to monitor the progress of the jobs. Once complete (condor_q returns 0 jobs), the results for each simulation are available in the cacti*.out files.
Where do I go from here?
Through this tutorial, you've seen the basic of Archer at work. If the system is useful to you, you can continue to use Archer in different ways:
Archer Global: register and join the large-scale Archer Global infrastructure
If you're interested in using Archer day-to-day for research and education, you should use Archer Global - our main computing infrastructure, which is available for registered users. Follow the Archer:Global tutorial to learn how to get started.
Archer Local: deploy a local Archer infrastructure
Detailed instructions on how to deploy Archer Local will be provided in the Fall of 2008. In the meantime, feel free to browse through the Grid Appliance documentation and tutorials to learn more about deploying local VM pools.
