Crash Course

To start work with CloudFlu functionality user need to have an AWS Amazon account and be registered for EC2 and S3 services. The only variables user need to define in his environment is AWS security credentails, for example:

   export AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=YYVUYVIUBIBI
   export AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=BBKBBOUjbkj/BBOUBOBJKBjbjbboubuBUB

Amazon EC2 service allows user to aquire unlimited amount of computing power.

cloudflu-cluster-start utility is responsible for the first and most important step - actual starting and configuring of the cluster. To run it just type :

  cloudflu-cluster-start

By default it launches Ubuntu 10.04 64bit based cluster nodes with the following characteristics:

Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5410 @ 2.33GHz (8 virtual cores) & 7 GB RAM & 1690 GB HDD

These nodes already have preintalled software and ready to use environment to be able to compile and run OpenFOAM solvers.

To ask about avaiable options and see corresponding default values you can type :

  cloudflu-cluster-start --help

For example, you can increase the number of cluster nodes in the following way :

  cloudflu-cluster-start --number-nodes=32

To print a list of identifiers for the run clusters you need to type:

  cloudflu-cluster-ls

To terminate a cluster you need to use its identifier :

  echo <cluster id> | cloudflu-cluster-rm

Terminate all the clusters :

  cloudflu-cluster-ls | xargs cloudflu-cluster-rm

To run a solver (whether one of the standard one or user defined) user need to go through the following steps:

• start a cluster (if you already started a cluster you can use just use by its identifier);

 a_cluster_id=`cloudflu-cluster-start` && echo ${a_cluster_id}

• book a study (a symbolical name for the data channel which will be used to pass output solver results from the cluster) in the following way, for example :

 a_study_name=`cloudflu-study-book` && echo ${a_study_name}

• start a solver in the following way, for example :

 cloudflu-solver-start --study-name=${a_study_name} --cluster-id= ${a_cluster_id} \
                       --case-dir="~/cloudflu-examples/custom"

• start downloading of the output solver results :

 cloudflu-solver-process --study-name=${a_study_name} --output-dir='damBreak.out'

Note : CloudFlu functionality is failsafe. You can easily resume downloading the solver output results even after your internet connection was broken. Just restart the 'broken' step once again to be able to continue.

To be able to run a solver case it should satisfy the following minor requirements.

• Solver case should contain an excutable file named - Allrun. Which is defined as an entry point for the case specific functionality. It is poosible to define you entry point, like in the following example :

 cloudflu-solver-start --case-dir='damBreak' --run-hook='my_run'

• Accept one command-line argument and iterpret it as number of cluster nodes:

 a_number_nodes=${1}

• Include the following standard procedure for generation of 'decomposeParDict':

 a_slots=`python -c "import os; print os.sysconf( 'SC_NPROCESSORS_ONLN' )"`
 a_number_processors=`python -c "print ${a_number_nodes} * ${a_slots}"`
 weights=`python -c "print tuple( [ 1 for an_id in range( ${a_number_processors} ) ] )"`
 processorWeights=`echo ${weights} | sed -e "s%,%%g"`
  
 cat > ./system/decomposeParDict <<EOF
 FoamFile
 {
   version     2.0;
   format      ascii;
   class       dictionary;
   location    "system";
   object      decomposeParDict;
 }
 numberOfSubdomains ${a_number_processors};
 method scotch;
 scotchCoeffs
 {
   processorWeights ${processorWeights};
 }
 EOF

All other details are left on the user.

See http://cloudflu.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/cloudflu/trunk/standard for more details.

User can run your own solveras well. The requrements for this user specific solver case, in general, are the same as for standard one. For this specific case user additionally need :

• Include his C++ solver defintion into the target case folder.

• Redefine special FOAM_USER_APPBIN and FOAM_USER_LIBBIN OpenFOAM environment variables to point out on the case folder:

 export FOAM_USER_APPBIN=${a_cur_dir}
 export PATH=${FOAM_USER_APPBIN}:${PATH}
  
 export FOAM_USER_LIBBIN=${a_cur_dir}
 export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=${FOAM_USER_LIBBIN}:${LD_LIBRARY_PATH}
  

where ${a_cur_dir} can be defined as:

 a_cur_dir=${0%/*}
  

• Include calling corresponding compilation procedure into the Allrun script.

All other details are left on the user.

See http://cloudflu.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/cloudflu/trunk/custome for more details.

CloudFlu comes with functionality that enables you form solver output from the cluster, namely :

cloudflu-study-upload - utility for uploading explict set of data;

cloudflu-timestamps-upload - utility for automatic uploading of fresh time results.

Use them to describe what are you really interested to.

See http://cloudflu.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/cloudflu/trunk/custome for more details.

CloudFlu allows you not just download the solver output data from cluster, but automatically post-process them as well. cloudflu-solver-process comes with the following additional options :

--time-hook=<an executable> - defines what functionality need to be run on the downloading of each fresh timestamp. You can use cloudflu-foam2vtk script to automatically generate corresponding VTK files

--before-hook=<an executable> - defines what functionality need to be run before any timestamp will be processed. You can use cloudflu-foam2vtk-before script to tell that a 'mesh' need to be uploaded first, to be able to run cloudflu-foam2vtk script sucessfuly, afterwards.

--after-hook=<an executable> - defines what functionality need to be run after the latest calculated timestamp will be received. You can use cloudflu-foam2vtk-after script to launch a paraView, to check the final results.

That is, in short, all you need to know to be able to access and effectively start to use the unlimited cloud computing resources. To contact us use CloudFlu forum and bug-tracker :

http://sourceforge.net/projects/cloudflu

Check CloudFlu wikki page, where we are going to talk about this functionality in more details :

http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/cloudflu

We are open for any suggestions and remarks to make you CFD analysis more flexible and exciting.

Use --help option to check what options are available to customize the given functionality.

Use --debug option to be able to see what is happenening.

Keep in touch and good luck!!!