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Platform LSF and Mathematica

• To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
• Subject: [mg113188] Platform LSF and Mathematica
• From: Zach Bjornson <bjornson at stanford.edu>
• Date: Sun, 17 Oct 2010 06:06:36 -0400 (EDT)

Hello, hello!

Does anyone have experience using Mathematica on a Platform LSF cluster? 
Specifically:

1. Local instances of Mathematica (on a local host) are apparently able 
to integrate with LSF clusters via the Cluster Integration configuration 
panel in Parallel Kernel Configuration. There is virtually no 
documentation for this though. Methods? (I have to use a client like 
cygwin to ssh from Windows into this cluster, which adds another layer 
of complexity.)

2. GridMathematica isn't running on this cluster [yet] so I'm stuck 
using LSF. I can reserve an entire machine (8 cores) with bsub -x, but 
dispatch takes forever and I'm limited to 8 kernels. How does 
Mathematica handle jobs that are instead dispatched with e.g. bsub -n 8 
(so there would be slots on 1 to 8 different machines)? Where the 
kernels sit seems to be an issue: for example, if I submit a job with 
bsub [-n 1 implied], then LaunchKernels[] in Mathematica, 8 kernels 
launch representing the 8 kernels on the machine that my job slot is on, 
even though I only reserved 1 slot; if I bsub -n 2 -R "span[hosts=2]" 
(have each slot on a different host), will I get 16 kernels that M can 
communicate with?

Any advice related to M on LSF would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks,
Zach