NeutrinoCluster - Contacting your Local Network Administrator

Contacting Your Network Administrator

Your campus will have someone who is responsible for the networking that connects the building where you intend to build your cluster to the outside world. If you have a local sys. admin, he/she should be able to direct you to your network contact.

Understaning your network connectivity.

You should try to understand what the theoretical connection speed would be to your new cluster. If it is less than 1 Gbps (giga bits per second), try to understand if there is a way to increase the speed and what the expense would be to increase it. If it is less than 100 Mbps, you will definitely need to find a way to get up to at least that much.

Also find out whether what your connection choices are for your cluster. It may be that you will connect directly to the public internet, connect to a campus network with direct connectivity to the internet, or connect to an internal network from which you will need a way to connect to/from the outside. Your cluster networking might have to be adjusted in light of the choices.

The "theoretical" speed is mostly not achieved. A large part of the problem often lies in possible misconfiguration of equipment at various parts of the network. You should discuss with your network contact if there is a way to measure the actual speed from a known point. There are probably ways to improve your connection that you can do in cooperation with your network contact.

Obtaining IP addresses

Assuming that you are building the default configuration of using a local network for your worker nodes, you will need to obtain IP addresses for the following nodes of your cluster.

• NFS node
• Head node
• Interactive nodes

Getting MAC addresses of your NICs from the system setup page

This instruction is for Dell PowerEdge 1950. Should be similar for other PowerEdge servers.

• Turn on or restart your system
• Press after you see " = System Setup". Note that only have a short time window to do this. If you miss your opportunity and the system begins to load, you'll have to start over.
• You should now have the "systems setup" screen. Choose "Integrated Devices"
• You should now have the "integrated devices" screen.
• Choose "MAC addresses", and write them down!
• Exit the setup screens via instructions at the bottom of the screen.
• Dell page which explains Systems Setup

In addition, you will need the following information from your network contact.

• netmask
• addresses of primary and secondary Domain Name Servers (DNS).

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The installation outline

Back to CERN Neutrino Cluster Setup Guide Main Page

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Major updates:
-- NectarB - 11-Aug-2016