Breniac hardware

Breniac is the VSC’s Tier-1 cluster.

Breniac login infrastructure

Direct login using SSH is possible to all login infrastructure.

Note

Only users involced in an active Tier-1 project have access to the infrastructure.

Two types of login nodes are available:

  • a classic login node, i.e., SSH access.
    • login1-tier1.hpc.kuleuven.be
    • login2-tier1.hpc.kuleuven.be
  • a login node that provides a desktop environment that can be used for, e.g., visualization, see the NX clients section:
    • nx-tier1.hpc.kuleuven.be

Warning

This node should not be accessed using terminal SSH, it serves only as a gateway to the actual login nodes your NX sessions will be running on.

The NX login node will start a session on a login node that has a GPU, i.e., login2-tier1.hpc.kuleuven.be.

Hardware details

The nodes are connected using an Infiniband EDR network.

Breniac hardware diagram

Breniac storage

Your $VSC_HOME and $VSC_DATA directory are mounted on the Breniac login and compute nodes. See your VSC institute’s information on local storage about policies and quota. Also check the VSC storage guidelines for information on what to store where.

Note

$VSC_HOME and $VSC_DATA are mounted using NFS, so they can not be used for parallel I/O. If your software benefits from using a parallel file system, please use $VSC_SCRATCH.

Variable Type Access Backup Default quota
$VSC_SCRATCH $VSC_SCRATCH_SITE GPFS breniac NO 1 TB
$VSC_SCRATCH_NODE ext4 breniac, job only NO 75 GB

The path names given below should be adapted to reflect your home institution and VSC account number.

Variable Name
$VSC_HOME /user/leuven/30X/vsc30XYZ
$VSC_DATA /data/leuven/30X/vsc30XYZ
$VSC_SCRATCH $VSC_SCRATCH_SITE /scratch/leuven/30X/vsc30XYZ
$VSC_SCRATCH_NODE /local_scratch