Bicocca INFN Severs

We have two servers running in the cluster of the MIB INFN section. The servers run on a Alma9 operating system and one (Brownie) features

  • NVIDIA A100 80Gb GPU

  • 2x26 core Intel Xeon 5320 2.2GHz CPU

  • 256Gb RAM

  • 3x1920Gb SSD SATAIII disks

  • 4x18Tb SATAIII 7200rpm HDD disks

while the other one (Pearly-Gates) features

  • NVIDIA A6000 40Gb GPU

  • 2x24 core AMD EPYC 7402P 2.8GHz CPU

  • 128Gb RAM

  • 2x1920Gb SSD SATAIII disks

  • 4x18Tb SATAIII 7200rpm HDD disks

Requesting an account

The servers are connected to the accounting system of the MIB INFN section. First you need to have a valid computing account with MIB-INFN and then you can ask for access to the server by sending an email to brownie-admins@lists.mib.infn.it. Once approved, you will be available to connect with the username and password of your MIB account.

You will also be added to the servers users’ mailing list (brownie-users@lists.mib.infn.it). Feel free to send messages to this list for discussing troubles or software requests.

Connection

Connections are allowed only from within the local network. If you are connecting from outside, please remember to login to the gateway cerbero first. There are two options to connect in one command. Either

$ ssh -J <user_name>@cerbero.mib.infn.it <user_name>@brownie # for brownie
$ ssh -J <user_name>@cerbero.mib.infn.it <user_name>@pearly-gates # for pearly-gates

or add the following lines to your .ssh/config:

Host brownie.mib.infn.it
  ProxyCommand ssh -W %h:%p <user_name>@cerbero.mib.infn.it

Note that the latest will allow you to use VisualStudio Code connection to the remote host to modify directly files on the server.

Services

Available services include:

  • cvmfs

  • eos

  • docker

For any further request, please contact brownie-admins@lists.mib.infn.it.

Please note that to access your eos area, you should first create your afs token by kinit:

$ kinit <cern_user_name>@CERN.CH

To use ROOT the simplest is to load an environment from cvmfs

$ source /cvmfs/sft.cern.ch/lcg/views/setupViews.sh LCG_105b x86_64-el9-gcc13-opt

be reminded of loading libraries compiled for x86_64-el9. A complete list of libraries for each LCG version can be found at this address.

Storage

Storage is divided in three areas

  • / 3.7TB of SSD. This is where the /home folders are located.

  • /data01 17.5TB of HDD. Use it for long term storage and backup.

  • /data02 17.5TB of HDD. Use it for long term storage and backup.

The SSD disk is much faster than HDD, plese take this in consideration when running your programs. A scratch area is located at /scratch/gr1/lhcb. Please use it sensibly. Checks will be performed routinely to delete file not accessed for long.