HARDWARE RESOURCES

The MARBITS bioinformatics platform is built around a High Performance Computing (HPC) cluster with 22 compute nodes, one master node and one login node, mixing IBM, Fujitsu and Supermicro hardware. It provides 396 computing cores (792 with hyperthreading) and 4.6 T of RAM. Storage is provided by a shared lustre filesystem with more than 450 T of disk.  It is physically located in the CPD room of the Centre Mediterrani d’Investigacions Marines i Ambientals (CMiMA), close by to the Somorrostro beach in Barcelona.

Master/login node

The master/login node is called marbits. It’s Fujitsu Primergy RX2530 M2 server with 2 x Intel Xeon E5-2603v4,  2 x 240 GB SSD disks and 64GB RAM. It runs CentOS 7.4, a RedHat-based linux distribution, with OpenHPC on top and slurm as job scheduler. The master node can only be accessed within the CMiMA local network.

High-performance computing nodes

he 22 computing nodes are divided in 3 classes according to their configuration and brand:

  • 8 Supermicro nodes deployed in 2 Twin systems (2x SYS2028TP-HTR) of 4 nodes each. Each node has 2 Intel Xeon processors (E5-2650v4) with 12 cores each to sum up to a total of 192 physical cores (no hyperthreading) and 2048 GB of RAM.
  • 2 Supermicro nodes deployed in 1 Twin systems (1x SYS2028TP-HTR+) of 4 nodes. (there are 2 barebones nodes that can be set up with memory and 2x CPUs in the future). Each node has 2 Intel Xeon processors (E5-2650v4) with 12 cores each to sum up to a total of 48 physical cores (no hyperthreading) and 772 GB of RAM each (1.54 T in total). They are used for memory-hungry processes such as metagenome assemblies.
  • 12 IBM dx360 M3 servers with 2 x 6-core Intel X5650 2.66GHz processors, 80G of RAM and 1 x 250G 7.2K RPM hard drive each. These class adds up 144 more physical cores and 960 GB of RAM.

Storage

General data storage is managed by a parallel filesystem (Lustre) shared by other resources from the CMiMA, with more than 450 TB of disk space.

Network

All computing nodes are connected via a 1 Gbps SMC Networks SMC8150L2 switch with 50 x 10/100/1000BASE-T ports. Communication with the Lustre filesystem is provided by a 10 Gbps Netgear XS748T switch.

DELL workstations

Several applications needing X-window forwarding can be carried out in the venerable DELL workstations. These are 3 DELL PowerEdge T710 servers with 2 x 4-core Intel Xeon E5620 processors, 16G of RAM and 1 x 2T hard drive. These servers can also be accesed only within the CMiMA network and need an independent user account.