IT Briefing Agenda 7/17/05

Information Technology at Emory

Information Technology DivisionTechnical Services

IT Briefing Agenda 7/17/05

• Microsoft Agreement• SPSS Site License• IMAP Polling• NetReg/CAT Update• Research Cluster• Premiere Support• NetCom Q&A

• John Ellis• Marcy Alexander• Ken Guyton• Alan White• Keven Haynes• Karen Jenkins• Paul Petersen


General Updates


Eagle Mail Performance

An opportunity to make it faster

Ken Guyton



Architecture

• Eagle mail consists of three services

– Relay – Delivery– Reading



Architecture

• Relay

– Moving email from computer to computer (SMTP)



Architecture

• Delivery

– Delivering messages into an INBOX.



Architecture

• Reading

– Users retrieving their messages to read them, mark as read, delete, etc. (IMAP)



Architecture

Relay Spam

Read/Deliv

Virus

IMAP proxy

Webmail

firewall

disk2 4

6

3

4

LDAP routingother svrs

clients

Relay

3



The Situation

• Reading and Delivery live on the same servers.



The Situation

1 2 3 4 5

Read/Delivery Servers

100% CPU UtilizationCPU Utilization

90%

50%

80% 80%

50%



The Situation

1 2 3 4 5Read/Delivery Servers

100% CPU Utilization

12300

4168

12809

8313

75

Users per server

90%

50%

80%

80%

50%



The Question

• What are 75 users doing to use 50% of a Read/Delivery server?



Observations

• Make some measurements of busy IMAP processes

• Tracing with truss• Profile processes • Packet snooping



Observations

• ...to answer questions:– What are these processes doing?– What system calls are using the

most CPU time?– What IMAP commands are being

sent?– ...and how often?



Results

• Processes are doing a lot of disk I/O.

• The system calls that account for the vast majority of CPU time are read() and alarm().

• The IMAP command is SELECT



More Observations

• Instrument the imapd daemon (we have the source code!)

• Log SELECTS on a user and mailbox basis

• Plot behavior



Results

0

200

400

600

800

1000

1 11 21 31 41 51

Users

To

tal

SE

LE

CT

co

mm

an

ds

≤ 1 min≤ 5 min > 5 min



Conclusions

• High-frequency SELECTs are killing us

• A new server/75 users is EXPENSIVE!



Hypothesis

• When clients check for new email they send a SELECT

• (They should send a NOOP)• Users are setting their clients to

check for email every minute



Final Notes

• Webmail checks every five minutes

(and does use SELECT)• Some clients have a drop-down

menu to select this time (1-min, 5-min, etc.)



Our Plea

• See if your users are polling < 5 min

• 10 min is better• You can always manually check

for new email• Help them change their polling

time if needed



The UNIX Group

• Chris Alexander• Bruce Anderson• Karla Fields• Amanda Gagnon• Ken Guyton• Curt Tucker• Eric Van Wieren


NetReg/CAT Update

Alan White


Emory University High Performance Computing Cluster

Keven Haynes



Need for High Performance

• Large number of computations• Large data set• Complex computations• Specialized applications • More disciplines doing

computational work



Need for Shared Resources

• Most researchers do not have physical resources to house large computing systems. Air Conditioning, Power, Security are all important, often overlooked.

• Many researchers lack technical expertise required to manage systems, especially Linux/Unix.

• Most personally-owned systems are underutilized, therefore not as cost-effective.

• Money pooled-together can buy bigger and better systems.



Emory High Performance Computing Cluster

• Partnership between Emory College, BIMCORE (School of Medicine) and ITD.

• Emory College and individual faculty (Jeager, Printz) provided funding for purchase of the cluster.

• BIMCORE provides software expertise, cost-recovery infrastructure.

• ITD provides facility and system administration.



The Cluster - hardware

• 63 dual-processor (AMD 2.2 GHz Opteron 248) Sun V20z’s “Compute Nodes”

• 1 quad-processor (AMD 2.2 GHZ Opteron 848) Sun V40z “Master Node”

• Compute Nodes have 2 GB of RAM each, Master node has 8GB.

• Each node has 73 GB of local disk space (RAID 1)

• Master Node has 550+ GB of local disk space• Two 47u APC powered rack enclosures



The Cluster - Networking

• All nodes connected via gigabit Ethernet (copper) on private network

• Two SMC gigabit switches• 21 Nodes are connected via 4 gigabit Myrinet• Service processors connected via 100 Mb

Ethernet• Two MRV serial console switches



The Cluster - Software• Red Hat Enterprise Linux - Version 3, x86_64,

Advanced Server and Workstation– Kernel 2.4.21, glibc 2.3.2, gcc version 3.2.3– 64-bit Operating system/runtime environment

• Sun Grid EngineTM :– Manages queuing and prioritization of jobs– Performs job and user accounting for time-shared

resource– Can support up to 200,000 jobs simultaneously– Heterogeneous support allows connection of Mac

OS X, Solaris and other execution hosts



Current and Future Applications

• Genesis (neural simulator, Jaeger)• Pattern Generation and Homeostasis in

Neural Circuits (Prinz)• Pharmacology (Severson)• Others:

– Animation Rendering – Statistical Analysis (-R-) – Numerical Analyis (MATLAB) – Bioinformatics (BLAST) – Large Population Studies, GIS



Who may use the Cluster?

• Researchers, namely PI’s• Open to anyone affiliated with

Emory, possibly some external research

• Subscription Fee: ~ $3000/year or $750/quarter



Questions?


Premiere Support Overview

Karen Jenkins



Premiere Support

• Advanced/escalated support for specific set of customers– Local support and other campus technical

professionals– Executive leadership (later phase)

• Benefits– Dedicated number to reduce wait times– Direct entry to high level support

technicians



When to use • Reporting of system down and other

performance issues only.– University Enterprise applications & Network– Examples include: Network Outage affecting a

large department, building, or campus; Eagle Mail is down; PeopleSoft is crawling; other “strange” behavior

• Non-critical or other work requests should go through Manage IT or ESR.– Examples include: account requests, virus

reporting, suggestions to improve service, etc.



Logistics

• Hours: M-F 8:00am – 5:00pm• After hours calls automatically

forwarded to the help desk (which forward to on-call after help desk hours).

• Premiere Support Team:– Call Center supervisor– Craig Myers– Linda Ellis



Responsibilities

• Obtain technical input/details• Escalate to proper Tier 3 team• Provide regular communication

and updates– Via Manage IT Bulletin Board

• Provide final debrief / explanation of problem– Again via Manage IT



Setup

• Dedicated line rings on the primary team members phone sets

• After 4 rings rolls over to help desk FTE phones … if busy the queue– Premiere Support calls are placed in

the front of the queue.– Investigating adding a visual indicator

for the help desk FTEs.



Pre-Requisites

• Requires a support account in Manage IT

• Participation in the local-l listserv• Caller ID information displayed



… and the number is …

Will be posted on the Manage IT Bulleting

Board

Available on TBD



INPUT, QUESTIONS, COMMENTS

?Questions?Questions



Quick Manage IT Update• New Manage IT Major Features for 8/31/05

– Flashboards– Port Status Table– 2-Way email– Assignment permissions group

• Target Features for 9/30/05– PS Status Table– Emory Reports– Magic View– Resolution / Communication to requester

Manage IT Training Session Scheduled for:September 13th @ 1:00pmNDB Auditorium or Kennessaw



Quick ESR Update

• New ESR Major Features by 8/31/05– Change pop-ups to long names– Web & DB self-service forms

• Target Features for 9/30/05– On-behalf of (in Manage IT too)– Communication box



NetCom Q&A

?Questions?Questions

IT Briefing Agenda 7/17/05

Documents

Transcript of IT Briefing Agenda 7/17/05