The EverLab Cluster and Numerical Experimentation in the Virtual Observatory

Evergrow SP2 Workshop
Call for participation in the Evergrow SP2 Workshop - The EverLab Cluster.
 
 June 7-8, 2006, HUJI, Jerusalem, Israel
Outline Structure Agenda Organization committee Participants Hotels Venue Facilities Workshop pictures

In the last few months the SP2 group headed by Elliot Jaffe finished modifying the PlanetLab software to be used over the Evergrow cluster. We are glad to report that we have now 31 working nodes over 4 sites. In the near future we will continue to expand the installations to all 8 Evergrow sites. All of the Everlab nodes are controlled by central servers located in HUJI - called Everlab (www.everlab.org).

The installed software supports two different computation platforms. First is inter-process communication using the PlanetLab software. This is used for deploying distributed network applications. The second platform is the Condor grid application used to schedule CPU intensive batch work. Furthermore, the shared file system AFS is installed for enabling shared storage spanning over several cluster nodes. MPI and Java are also supported.

Currently the only thing missing for our cluster is: USERS. So we are holding this workshop intended for educating Evergrow users on how to use the Everlab cluster. The target audience is Evergrow researchers which use either intensive CPU simulations or networking applications research.

We suggest that each participating institute will send a person to participate in this workshop. The participant could be either system administrator which operates the cluster (in sites which have clusters) a Ph.D. student or postdoc which are running experiments, or a senior researcher. The final target of this workshop is that each participants will be able to guide new users in its institute and thus disseminate the knowledge in the different institutes.

Another topic of this workshop is numerical experimentation using the virtual observatory. Recently, more and more of the DIMES and ETOMIC data are being release for researches to investigates, and the API is improved for enabling new types of experiments. We would like to use this option for planning new types or experiments and measurements, specifically using the EverLab cluster.

The meeting is a part of the

   Evergrow EU project

EverLab Ganglia Monitor

Structure

The workshop will be a two days workshop. The first day will be for tutorials and "hands-on" experiance using the EverLab cluster. The second day will be dedicated to planning experiments and sharing ideas for future research which exploits the EverLab cluster and the DIMES and ETOMIC agents and data.

Agenda

This agenda is prelimary and subject to change!

Day 1 - June 7th, 2006

When What Where
09:30 Opening: welcome + schedule overview for the "work" part of the workshop (Elliot Jaffe) Room 13, Beit Belgia
9:45 Participants short presentation about existing/future experiments involding either GRID or IPC (PlanetLab etc.). Presentation should be up to 10 minutes (max 5 slides). Preliminary list of prentations: HUJI,SICS,UCL,TUC,EPFL,Rome,Orsay.
  • Renault John - EPFL pdf
  • Boriss Mejias - UCL pdf
  • Andrea Pagnani - ISI pdf
  • Cosmin Arad - SICS ppt pdf
  • Iris Miliaraki - TUC ppt
  • David Saad - Aston ppt
    		• Room 13, Beit Belgia
    11:00 Coffee break Room 13, Beit Belgia
    11:15 EverLab cluster overview and system signup - Elliot Jaffe
  • Lecture slides pdf
    		• Room 13, Beit Belgia
    12:30 Hands on - registration, creating slice (user account) and allocating machines
    13:00 Lunch break Beit Belgia
    14:00 Eran Shir (TAU) - Using the DIMES agents to create network experiments
  • Lecture slides ppt
    		• TBA
    16:00 Coffee break
    16:15 Working with PlanetLab /EverLab (deploying your programs on multiple machines and getting the results back) - Danny Bickson.
    Resources: everlab_scripts.zip
    PlanetLab How-To.pdf
    Lecture slides
    Exercise.txt
    		 Room 13, Beit Belgia
    20:00 Planned Dinner TBA

    Day 2 - June 8th, 2006

    When What Where
    09:00 Using the Condor Batch Scheduling system on top of EverLab - Elliot Jaffe
  • Lecture slides pdf
    		• Room 13, Beit Belgia
    10:00 Ohad Serfaty (TAU) Experiments using the DIMES and ETOMIC data and agents.
  • Lecture slides ppt
    • 11:00 Coffee break
    11:15 Scott Kirkpatrick (HUJI) - Numerical experimentation using the EverLab cluster.
    12:00 Lunch
    13:00 - 15:00 Hands on exercies and experimentation TBD
    15:00 - 15:30 Coffee break TBD
    15:30 Future Discussion. What more do we need and how can we get there.
    Discussion notes     		Room 13, Beit Belgia

    Organization Committe

    Local organization:

    Technical Sessions

    Participants

    You can register to EverGrow Everywhere Workshop by sending an email to the local organization committee. Preliminary list of participants (ordered by country):
    Boris Mejias, (UCL, Belgium)
    Thierry Mora and Lenka Zdeborova (Orsay, France)
    Cuvellier Xavier (OneLab - Marie Curie Univ. Paris, France)
    Nicolas Sourlas (France)
    Christos Tryfonopoulos and Iris Miliaraki (TUC, Greece)
    Danny Bickson, Elliot Jaffe, Scott Kirkpatrick and Amouyal Lior (HUJI, Israel)
    Yuval Shavitt, Eran Shir and Ohad Serfaty (TAU, Israel)
    Alessandra Tedeschi (Univ. of Rome, Italy)
    Andrea Pagnani (ISI, Torino)
    Roberto Alamino and David Saad, (Aston, UK)
    Mikael Nehlsen and Cosmin Arad (SICS, Sweden)
    Renault John (EPFL, Switzerland)

    Hotels

    We have reserved a block of rooms in the Jerusalem Park Plaza hotel
    You should book the room until the 17th of May to get our special rates.
    The hotel phone for ordering is: +972-2-6582222 mention you are arriving to the Hebrew University to get the special rate: single room for 60$, double room for 72$. The hotel is within 5 minutes walking distance from the university (see the Venue section for a detailed map...)

    Venue


    Arriving to Israel

    Israel has only one internation airport - the Ben Guyrion international airport. On the flight you will be asked to fill a form stating the reason for your visit. There is a passport inspection line after landing that sometimes takes up to half an hour. It is advised to have with you a printout of the conference website. If you are asked to, you are welcome to give me (Danny Bickson) as your host in Israel, my cell phone is +972-545-487421, University phone: 02-6585706.
    The currency in israel is the New Israeli Shekel (NIS) where 4.5 NIS = 1 $.

    Getting to the hotel from the airport

    Driving Directions:
    Ben Gurion International Airport Take the main highway (Route 1) east to Jersusalem's main city entrance (about 45 km). Turn right onto Herzl Boulevard and at third traffic light turn left to hotel Jerusalem Park Plaza.
    By Taxi:
    A special taxi from the airport to the hotel should take about 45-50 mintues and cost around 200 NIS (about 45$). In case of several people traveling together the price might get 20% higher or so.
    In case you arrive at night, the best option is to order a special taxi one day ahead, and give your flight number and estimated arrival hour. The taxi driver name is Dudi, his phone is +972-544-474854. (From inside Israel: 0544-474854). There are also many taxis parking and waiting at the airport. There are service taxis ("Nesher" taxis) which goes hourly and the ride is about 45 NIS per person (about 10$) but they are slower.

    Getting to the meeting room

    The meetings will be held on Beit Belgia (Belgium House).
    Park Plaza area MAP(5 minutes walk from the hotel to the main university gate)
    HUJI University - Givaat Ram Campus Map(5 minutes walk from the university main gate to the Belgium house. Note that there is a security check when entering the university, you are advised to bring the workshop printout with you.)

    Internet Access

    There is a public wireless network in the Beit Belgia building for Internet access. However for login into the cluster, each participant should send me (Danny Bickson) his passport number for enabling opening guest account on HUJI's computers.

    Power supply

    We use 220V power. Power outlet

    Workshop pictures

    Pictures by Danny Bickson
    Pictures by Scott Kirkpatrick
    Pictures by Iris Miliaraki
    Pictures by Boris Mejias

    Website deisgn by Manfred Hauswirth