Workpackages overview

Ad hoc storage system

Ad-hoc storage system. The continuously growing size of HPC systems increases the probability of congestion on the back-end file systems. Ad-hoc storage systems dynamically virtualise on-node storage into a fast storage volume that allows congestion on the back-end storage systems to be reduced and data locality to be improved [9]. ADMIRE will develop two active ad-hoc storage systems with QoS support, addressing I/O performance and scalabil- ity. (Objectives O1, O2, O3, and O6; KPIs 1-6). ADMIRE will provide a high-performance ad-hoc file system that is based on the prototype ad-hoc file system GekkoFS developed by JGU and BSC. GekkoFS can be used by applications as a burst-buffer to alleviate I/O peaks and checkpointing pressure and already provides scalability to more than 500 nodes and delivers more than 40,000,000 file creates per second. It ranked number 4 in the overall 10-node challenge of Nov. 2019 IO500, while using a much smaller storage backend than competing file systems. It also even ranked number 2 concerning metadata performance in the same challenge. GekkoFS will be extended in ADMIRE to support malleability, allowing the dynamic resizing of resources in coordination with the malleability management module, and by integrating reliability mechanisms to enable long-term usage. Exposing control points will allow balancing the computation and I/O performance by coordinating the ad-hoc file system with the job and I/O scheduler. Since not all applications in the HPC ecosystem rely on traditional POSIX I/O interfaces, ADMIRE will also apply these ideas to BSC’s object store dataClay [10], thus providing more generality to the project’s infrastructure. Sections 1.3.2.5 and 1.4.1 provide more details about the ad-hoc storage system, and the advances over the state-of-the-art.

List of work packages

Deliverables:

WP1: Project management (UC3M)

WP2: Ad hoc storage systems (JGU)

WP3: Malleability management (TUDA)

WP4: I/O scheduler (BSC)

WP5: Sensing and profiling (DDN)

WP6: Intelligent controller (INRIA)

WP7: Application co-design (FZJ)

WP8: Dissemination and exploitation (PARATOOLS SAS)

Description of work (overview)

our envolvements

WP1: Project management (UC3M)

WP2: Ad hoc storage systems (JGU)

WP3: Malleability management (TUDA)

WP4: I/O scheduler (BSC)

WP5: Sensing and profiling (DDN)

WP6: Intelligent controller (INRIA)

WP7: Application co-design (FZJ)

JGU not part of

WP8: Dissemination and exploitation (PARATOOLS SAS)

Description of work (detailed)

our envolvements

WP1: Project management (UC3M)

This work package includes the effective management of the project as described in Section 3.2, including monitoring of progress towards milestones and deliverables, evaluation of research results, and the proper dissemination of those results as described in Section 2.2.1. It also provides the overall co-ordination of activities, both financial and technical. Thus, this WP will ensure resource sharing and usage as well as overall smooth execution of the project activities and the organisation project meetings. The project coordinator will prepare reviewing meetings, ensure the flow of information to the partner teams, signal any delay in providing the requested contributions, and identify deviations from the workplans.

WP2: Ad hoc storage systems (JGU)

This WP develops ad-hoc storage systems to efficiently use node-internal NVMe and persistent memory technologies to reduce the pressure on back-end storage systems. It simplifies ad-hoc storage development as much as possible by defining minimal storage semantics (Task 2.1) and also provides storage systems without resilience (Task 2.2). Nevertheless, also longer-running applications and workflows will be supported by including additional error correcting codes (Task 2.3). The storage systems developed in this work package will leverage GekkoFS and the dataClay object storage.

WP3: Malleability management (TUDA)

We will provide base mechanisms for the combined malleability of compute and I/O resources. Those mechanisms will be guided by new scheduling algorithms and policies, integrated into Slurm via a plugin, that are able to maximise throughput of the system by balancing computation and I/O. Moreover, we will add malleability to the ad-hoc storage systems developed in WP 2.

WP4: I/O scheduler (BSC)

Due to the continuous data traffic of ad-hoc storage systems and the complexity of the HPC storage hierarchy, I/O operations involving the shared back-end file system need to be coordinated to limit congestion while minimising batch job waiting times. This WP will develop an I/O Scheduler with control point support that coordinates inputs from the intelligent controller and the resource and malleability managers to provide QoS-aware data scheduling. Functionalities to support in-situ/in-transit data transformations will be provided, and using low-power processors for such tasks will be researched.

WP5: Sensing and profiling (DDN)

This WP will investigate and develop scalable monitoring (T5.2) and profiling tools (T5.3), including low-level instrumentation, data collection, mining and data-centric online performance analysis, able to scale to the exascale level. The WP will put emphasis not only on monitoring performance metrics, but also on modelling applications I/O profiles that enable to predict the scaling behaviour of applications (T5.3). Starting from historic I/O profiles and user hints, ADMIRE will generate dynamically feedback for the controller and help it to understand the interplay between applications necessary for online optimisation.

WP6: Intelligent controller (INRIA)

This work package integrates and analyses cross-layer system data to dynamically and intelligently steer the system components. It will optimise at system-scale the data management and the I/O accesses of the running applications based on the input provided by the ecosystem (WP5) and will enforce policies (e.g., I/O scheduling (WP4)) through malleability (WP3) and I/O management (WP2). In order to take decision it will rely on machine learning techniques to predict resource usage and application behaviour.

WP7: Application co-design (FZJ)

JGU not part of

WP8: Dissemination and exploitation (PARATOOLS SAS)

This workpackage is responsible for the dissemination of research results, the creation of an exploitation plan, promoting open source releases of ADMIRE framework and improving public awareness of the project, as described in Section 2.2. We will set up a project website to include all public documents and publications related to the project. Technical workshops and showcases will be held every year, probably co-located with major conferences, to contact with research groups, industrial researchers, and associations (as HIPEAC).

Technical objectives


Revision #5
Created 26 March 2021 12:38:19 by Lefthy
Updated 7 May 2021 08:05:08 by Lefthy