The condominium model
For users who need more than casual access to a shared computing environment, OIT also offers faculty members the possibility to purchase additional dedicated resources to augment ACRES by becoming ACRES owners. Choosing from a standard set of server configurations supported by OIT staff (known as the ACRES catalog), principal investigators (PIs) can purchase their own servers to add to the cluster.
It is anticipated that when fully operational the vast majority of ACRES’s compute nodes will be owners nodes, and PI purchases will be the main driver behind the expansion of the cluster.
This model, often referred to as the condo model, allows ACRES owners to benefit from the scale of the cluster and give them access to more compute nodes than their individual purchase. This provides owners with much greater flexibility than owning a standalone cluster.
The resource scheduler configuration works like this:
- owners and their research teams have priority use of the resources they purchase,
- when those resources are idle, other owners can use them,
- when there are no Clarkson jobs waiting in the queue, idle cycles will be used to run jobs from the Open Science Grid.
This provides a way to get more resources to run less important jobs in the background, while making sure that an owner always gets access to his/her own nodes. Participating owners also have shared access to the original base ACRES nodes, along with everyone else.
Benefits
Benefits to owners include:
- Data center hosting, including backup power and cooling
- Connection to high-performance network backbone
- Access to high-performance scratch disk space
- Priority access to nodes that they own
- Background access to any owner nodes that are not in use
- System configuration and administration
- User support
- Standard software stack, appropriate for a range of research needs
ACRES Catalog
For administrative reasons, OIT offers PIs the possibility to purchase ACRES nodes twice per year. However, large orders could be accommodated at any time. If you are interested in becoming an owner, please contact the OIT HelpDesk for further information. OIT will assist with the purchase of all hardware to be added to ACRES. PIs should NOT purchase their own hardware for addition to the cluster.
General CPU-based Compute Node
| Processors | Dual-socket, 20-core, 2.1 GHz Intel Cascade Lake Xeon 6230 processors (40 cores/node) |
| Memory | 128 GB (8x 16GB) 2666 MHz DDR4 ECC RDIMMs |
| Interconnect | 56 Gbps Mellanox ConnectX4 FDR Infiniband interconnect |
| Hard Drive | 256GB Intel SSD Pro 7600p series (local swap and log files) |
| Warranty | 3 years |
| Price | Approximately $7500 |
Big Memory Compute Node
| Processors | Dual-socket, 20-core, 2.1 GHz Intel Cascade Lake Xeon 6230 processors (40 cores/node) |
| Memory | 512 GB (8x 64GB) 2666 MHz DDR ECC LR-DIMMs |
| Interconnect | 56 Gbps Mellanox ConnectX4 FDR Infiniband interconnect |
| Hard Drive | 256GB Intel SSD Pro 7600p series (local swap and log files) |
| Warranty | 3 years |
| Price | Approximately $10,000 |
GPU Compute Node
| Processors | Dual-socket, 20-core, 2.1 GHz Intel Cascade Lake Xeon 6230 processors (40 cores/node) |
| GPU | Quad NVIDIA Tesla V100 accelerators, 32GB HBM2 |
| Memory | 192 GB (12x 16GB) 2933MHz DDR ECC RDIMMs |
| Interconnect | 56 Gbps Mellanox ConnectX4 FDR Infiniband interconnect |
| Hard Drive | 256GB Intel SSD Pro 7600p series (local swap and log files) |
| Warranty | 3 years |
| Price | Approximately $50,000 |