- About Lxfarm -

MEPhI Lxfarm is a cluster (a farm) of computers working under Linux operation system. Cluster is intended for a time-consuming calculations and data storage, mainly in nuclear physics, physics of particles and cosmic rays. Lxfarm is also a site of GRID - world-wide system of computing centers. Cluster is connected via 1 Gbit network with other GRID sites in Moscow and abroad.

- Lxfarm components -

Currently (December 2004) the Lxfarm cluster consists of:
lxfarm99 - dual Pentium-4 866 MHz, 1 Mb RAM, 4x36 Gb SCSI disks with RAID controller. It is a file server for user's catalogs and common software.
lxfarm01-lxfarm03 - computers with Celeron 733 MHz processors, 128 Mb RAM. They are intended for simple calculations and debugging purposes.
lxfarm04, lxfarm05 - dual Xeon 2.8 GHz, 1 Mb RAM. For time-consuming calculations.
lxfarm06, lxfarm07, lxfarm09 - realize some GRID services.
lxfarm08 - file server with 2 Tbyte disk space. It is intended for storage of large amount of data, mainly as a GRID Storage Element.
All computer are working under OS RedHat Linux version 7.3, CERN release.

- Lxfarm services -

NIS realizes an uniform authorization and identification of users over all computers of the farm.
NFS - Network File System - is intended for "export" of user's home directories and of catalogs with common software to all computers where it is necessary. So NIS and NFS provide an uniform working environment for all users over all computers: any user can login to any computer with the same username and password and he/she will have the same home directory and software collection. NFS is also used to export some catalogs where data are stored.
AFS network file system. Contrary to NFS, which is a locale file system, AFS is intended for usage of common disk space from different computers over the world. Our cluster is connected to AFS as a client of CERN AFS cell.
PBS - batch system. User can create some job script, where he/she specifies the required resources and submits it for execution to PBS. Batch system automatically distributes user's jobs to computing nodes taking into account the current node's loading and the required resources, providing the most effective cluster resources usage.
Backup system. Every day the user's home catalogs, common software and most important system files are kept in backup storage area.
Web server provide general information about the Lxfarm/GRID cluster and about system loading. It contains also some local documentation and links for useful Web resources.
E-mail system is intended mainly for local usage: information of users about any news and changes in the system etc.
In more details you can read about Lxfarm and how to use it in "Working on Lxfarm" document, which is accessible in "Documentation" section (in Russian).