PARMON

A Monitoring System for Clusters of Computers


Introduction

Workstation/PC clusters have become a cost-effective solution for high performance computing. C-DAC’s PARAM 10000 (OpenFrame) is a large cluster of high performance workstations interconnected through low-latency, high bandwidth communication networks. The management and control of such a huge system is a tedious and challenging task since workstations/PCs are typically designed to work as a standalone system, rather than a part of clusters. We have designed and developed a tool called PARMON that allows effective monitoring and control of large clusters. It allows the monitoring of critical system resource activities and their utilization at three different levels: entire system, node, and component level. It also supports the monitoring of multiple instances of the same component, for instance, multiple processors in SMP type cluster nodes.

PARMON is a portable, flexible, interactive, scalable, location-transparent, and comprehensive environment based on client-server technology.  The major components of PARMON are parmon-server—system resource activities and utilization information provider and parmon-client—GUI based client responsible for interacting with parmon-server and users for data gathering in real-time and presenting information graphically for visualization. The client is developed as a Java application and the server is developed as a multithreaded server using C and POSIX/Solaris threads and Java does not support interfaces to access system internals. PARMON is regularly used to monitor C-DAC PARAM 10000 supercomputer, a cluster of 48 Ultra-4 workstations powered by Solaris operating system.

The recent popularity of Beowulf-class clusters (dedicated Linux clusters) in terms of price-performance ratio has motivated us to port PARMON to Linux (accomplished by porting system dependent portions of parmon-server). This enables management/monitoring of both Solaris and Linux-based clusters (federated clusters) through a single user interface.

Developed At

  • Centre for Development of Advanced Computing, Bangalore, India.
  • Project Team

    Publications

    Presentations

    Maintained and Marketed By

  • Centre for Development of Advanced Computing, India.
  • For related products information from C-DAC, browse HPCC Software. Also for PARMON marketing and sales information, please contact C-DAC directly.
  • Related Project (for Windows Clusters)

  • Cluster Environment Observer (CEO): A Tool for Adminstering Windows Clusters