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 :ref:``VSC storage guidelines <data location>` 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