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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">Hi John, Tony,</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix"><br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 6/28/23 10:18, Tony Travis wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:99f2119f-d2a5-efd9-1cfd-46541d8d5955@minke-informatics.co.uk">On
28/06/2023 07:18, John Hearns wrote:
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">Rugged individuaiist? I like that... Me
puts on plaid shirt and goes to wrestle with some bears,,,
<br>
<br>
> Maybe it is time for an HPC Linux distro, this is where
<br>
Good move. I would say a lightweight distro that does not do
much nd is rebooted every time a job finishes.
<br>
Wonder what security types would think of that....
<br>
<br>
Sidelining the discussion a bit I have been involved with
projects where security types insist on the entire stack for
firmware upwards is kept up to date.
<br>
This feeds into the Redha debate of course - if we go Debian how
do you satisfy corporate types?
<br>
i guess ubuntu has a role here.
<br>
</blockquote>
<br>
Hi, John.
<br>
<br>
There is already an Ubuntu-based HPC distro: Qlustar
<br>
<br>
<blockquote type="cite"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://qlustar.com/">https://qlustar.com/</a>
<br>
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
<p>let me chime in here and explain a little about Qlustar. While it
is certainly a distro (actually two, one based on Ubuntu, the
other one on RHELcompat - Alma 8 and CentOS 7), it is much better
viewed as a ClusterOS for HPC/AI and Storage. The architecture is
such that cluster head-nodes always run on Ubuntu LTS (Qlustar 13
<-> Ubuntu 22.04, Qlustar 12 <-> Ubuntu 20.04), but
nodes currently may also run Alma 8 and CentOS 7.</p>
<p>Anything other than a head-node boots images via the net and
images are sent in a two-stage process (small initrd via normal
PXE < 40MB, which pulls the real squashfs image via a custom
multicast client).</p>
<p>HPC stuff like ready-to-run up-to-date Nvidia drivers, MLNX OFED,
Slurm, Lustre, Spack, BeeGFS, ... is all integrated and working
out-of-the-box. Security updates for all this stuff typically
coming like every 6 weeks. No more worries about version changes
between all these components, Qlustar takes care of this.<br>
</p>
<p>To manage the cluster beast there is a constantly improving
management framework: QluMan (for detailed feature description
have a look at its manual at
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://docs.qlustar.com/Qlustar/13/ClusterOS/qluman-guide/Introduction.html">https://docs.qlustar.com/Qlustar/13/ClusterOS/qluman-guide/Introduction.html</a>)<br>
</p>
<p>Actually something like an upgrade path for people wanting to
migrate away from RHELcompat to Ubuntu is rather smooth:</p>
<ol>
<li>Install a Qlustar head.</li>
<li>Setup some nodes with CentOS 7 or Alma 8 and the required RPMs
to match your earlier environment.</li>
<li>Have other nodes running Ubuntu.</li>
<li>Setup some slurm queues for the different archs.<br>
</li>
<li>Your users should then be able to run their codes on the
RHELcompat nodes and can get started to port things to Ubuntu at
the same time. If you're using spack e.g., this should really be
a piece of cake. <br>
</li>
</ol>
<p>Our software is 100% open source, will stay that way forever and
yes, there are many clusters worldwide running on Qlustar,
academia, research labs, commercial. Qlustar is financed via
support contracts sold by Q-Leap, no external invest money, so no
external interests to mess things up.<br>
</p>
<p>I kind of hate to send messages like this that might come across
like marketing. On the other hand, I feel that the community
doesn't quite know well enough, what Qlustar can provide and needs
some more info/assurance/guidance before making the big step with
migration away from the known and trusted. In any case, I felt
since quite a while that more community building from our side is
necessary and maybe this is a good moment to start.</p>
<p>Ready for more discussion,</p>
<p>Roland</p>
<p>-------<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://qlustar.com">https://qlustar.com</a><br>
-- 100% Open Source HPC / Storage / Cloud Linux Cluster OS --<br>
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