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Unclipped Condor in Windows

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Title: Unclipped Condor in Windows

1
Unclipped Condor in Windows via coLinux

Henry Neeman, Horst Severini,
Chris Franklin, Josh Alexander
University of Oklahoma
Sumanth J.V.
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Condor Week, University of Wisconsin, Tuesday May
1 2007

2
Condor Linux vs Windows

Condor inside Linux full featured
Condor inside Windows clipped
No autocheckpointing
No job automigration
No remote system calls
No Standard Universe

http//www.our-picks.com/archives/2006/10/page/2/
3
Lots of PCs in IT Labs

At many institutions, there are lots of PC labs
managed by a central IT organizations.
If the head of IT (e.g., CIO) is on board,
then all of these PCs can be Condorized.
But, these labs tend to be Windows labs, not
Linux. So you cant take the Windows desktop
experience away from the desktop users, just to
get Condor.
So, how can we have Linux Condor AND Windows
desktop on the same PC at the same time?

4
Solution Attempt 1 VMware

Attempted solution VMware
Linux as native host OS
Condor inside Linux
VMware inside Linux
Windows inside VMware
Tested on 200 PCs in IT PC labs (Union, library,
dorms, Physics Dept)
In production for over a year

5
VMware Disadvantages

Attempted solution VMware
Linux as native host OS
Condor inside Linux
VMware inside Linux
Windows inside VMware
Disadvantages
VMware costs money! (Less so now than then.)
Crashy
VMware performance tuning (straight to disk) was
unstable
Sensitive to hardware heterogeneity
Painful to manage
CD/DVD burners and USB drives didnt work in some
PCs.

6
A Better Solution coLinux

Cooperative Linux (coLinux)
http//www.colinux.org/
FREE!
Runs inside native Windows
No sensitivity to hardware type
Better performance
Easier to customize
Smaller disk footprint and lower CPU usage in
idle
Minimal management required (10 hours/month)

7
Compatibility Issue

About 30 of the 200 lab PCs we installed coLinux
on had problems with it, so those PCs now run a
prerelease version of coLinux.
We have no idea why the production version of
coLinux was a miserable failure on these 30 PCs,
nor why the prerelease version succeeded.

8
Preventing BSOD

The Data Execution Prevention feature inside
Windows, when running on some newer processors,
can conflict with coLinux and cause system
failure. The solution to this problem is to add
the /NOEXECUTE switch to the Windows boot.ini.

9
Network Issue

Networking options
Bridged Each PC has to have a second IP address,
so the institution has to have plenty of spare IP
addresses available. (Oklahoma solution)
NAT The Condor pool requires a Generic
Connection Broker (GCB) on a separate, dedicated
PC (hardware ), and has some instability.
Switched to OpenVPN.(Nebraska solution)
Nebraska experimented with port forwarding in
Windows, but abandoned it for OpenVPN because of
security and usability.

10
Traversing NATs and Firewalls

What is GCB (Connection Broker)?
Socket level approach.
A broker arranges connections between machines
inside the firewall and machines outside the
firewall.
What is OpenVPN (Open Virtual Private Network)?
A network within a network.
Virtual network adapter.
Virtual IP (static/dynamic).
TCP within UDP.
Client/Server architecture.
All to All communication.
All traffic is encrypted by default.

11
OpenVPN

When using GCB, each machine is represented by a
unique port on the broker.
Central Manager sees all the machines as
ltGCB_IPport 1gt, ltGCB_IP port 2gt etc.
Only applications linked against GCB work.
(Condor is already linked)
When using OpenVPN, each machine has a unique
virtual IP address in the VPN.
Simplifies troubleshooting.
Central Manager is also part of the OpenVPN and
runs in server mode.
ClientConnect.py
Determines Virtual IP of a new client based on
its Real IP.
E.g. node-25-55 has real IP129.93.25.55 gets
virtual IP10.1.25.55
Pushes this configuration to the clients.
Updates /etc/hosts.
OpenVPN lockups can be fixed with mssfix 1200 and
fragment 1200 options?

12
OpenVPN

No modification of application required to use
OpenVPN.
We have successfully mounted NFS shares (CMS
stack).
Inbound SSH access
Since all-to-all communication is present, even
MPICH works.
Remember all-to-all communication still has to go
through the OpenVPN server.
Secure
No firewall required in coLinux.

13
Monitoring Issue

Condor inside Linux monitors keyboard and mouse
usage to decide when to suspend a job.
In coLinux, this is tricky.
We had to set up a Visual Basic script on the
Windows side to send the keyboard and mouse
information to coLinux.
UNL implements a similar idea in C, and OU is
now doing likewise.
UNL collects all the keyboard and mouse data on a
server, while OU does it on each local machine.
But the result is the same.

14
Monitoring coLinux Labs

How to determine whether all the machines in each
lab are up an running?
condor_status only displays working machines.
What about missing machines?
We need a list of expected but missing nodes per
lab.
We need a physical layout of the nodes in each
lab.
MYSQL database to store lab info.
Need to separately handle static and dynamic IP
labs.
Static IPs are easy to handle.
Store IP and relative co-ordinates of the node.
Dynamic IP store a lambda function expressing how
to determine if a machine belongs to a lab.
E.g. lambda x '18-' in x - matches node-18-2,
node-18-3
Store expected number of machines per lab, known
hardware/software issues as notes per machine.
Compare output of condor_status and MYSQL
database.
Demo http//mindspawn.unl.edu/condor/stats
Web front-end developed for mod_python.

15
How to Build a Multistate Grid

To make a prairie
It takes a clover and one bee.
One clover, and a bee, and reverie.
The reverie alone will do,
If bees are few.
Emily Dickinson, 1858

http//magickcanoe.com/blog/2006/08/24/on-our-walk
/
16
OUs NSF CI-TEAM Project

OU recently received a grant from the National
Science Foundations Cyberinfrastructure
Training, Education, Advancement, and Mentoring
for Our 21st Century Workforce (CI-TEAM) program.
Objectives
Teach general HPC concepts to a broad audience
Provide Condor resources to the national
community
Teach users to use Condor and sysadmins to deploy
and administer it
Teach bioinformatics students to use BLAST over
Condor

17
OU NSF CI-TEAM Project
Cyberinfrastructure Education for Bioinformatics
and Beyond
Objectives
OU will provide

Condor pool of 750 desktop PCs (already part of
the Open Science Grid)
Supercomputing in Plain English workshops via
videoconferencing
Cyberinfrastructure rounds (consulting) via
videoconferencing
drop-in CDs for installing full-featured Condor
on a Windows PC (Cyberinfrastructure for FREE)
sysadmin consulting for installing and
maintaining Condor on desktop PCs.
OUs team includes High School, Minority
Serving, 2-year, 4-year, masters-granting 11 of
the 15 institutions are in 4
EPSCoR states (AR, KS, NE, OK).

teach students and faculty to use FREE Condor
middleware, stealing computing time on idle PCs
teach system administrators to deploy and
maintain Condor on PCs
teach bioinformatics students to use BLAST on
Condor
provide Condor Cyberinfrastructure to the
national community (FREE).

18
OU NSF CI-TEAM Project