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Elastic High Performance Computing:Terms

Last Updated:Dec 25, 2023

This topic describes the terms that are used in Elastic High Performance Computing (E-HPC).

The following table lists the terms that are used in E-HPC.

Term

Description

cluster

A cluster is a set of nodes capable of high-performance computing. Compared with a single node, it provides high performance, auto scaling, high stability, and high reliability. A cluster contains resources such as an elastic IP address, a scheduler, cluster nodes, domain accounts, cluster users, and runtime software.

node

A cluster contains management nodes, compute nodes, and a logon node. Each node is an ECS instance.

image

An image provides the information that all cluster nodes require. The information includes the operating system, pre-installed software, and deployed business or application data of a cluster.

user

A user is used to indicate your identity when you submit jobs in a cluster. E-HPC provides the following permissions for users:

  • Ordinary permissions: applicable to ordinary users that only need to submit and debug jobs.

  • Sudo permissions: applicable to the administrator who needs to manage the cluster. In addition to submitting and debugging jobs, users who have sudo permissions can run sudo commands to install software and restart nodes.

job

A job is the basis of E-HPC. A job consists of a shell script and an executable file. Before you perform high-performance computing, you must submit a job in the E-HPC console.

scheduler

A scheduler is used to schedule jobs.

domain account

E-HPC supports NIS and LDAP.

  • Network Information Service (NIS): NIS provides centralized identity management. You can create a user on the NIS server. After a new node is added to NIS, you can use the user to log on to the node without the need to create a user on each node.

  • Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP): LDAP is used to authenticate E-HPC users. You can authorize and group users by using LDAP so that users have different permissions.

visualization service

After you create a visualization service, you can remotely log on to the cloud desktop or app of Elastic High Performance Computing (E-HPC) by using the E-HPC console. This way, you can implement high-performance computing in a graphical manner.

HPC container application

HPC container applications allow you to improve job efficiency by using powerful E-HPC clusters and conveniently deployed containers.

auto scaling

E-HPC provides the auto scaling feature that can dynamically allocate compute nodes based on the configured auto scaling policy. The system can automatically add or remove compute nodes based on real-time loads. This way, you can save resources and costs.