2.1 Understand and Plan Your System Environment
This topic provides information that is important to understand before you begin your Nitro installation.
In this topic:
- 2.1.1 Nitro Licenses and Licensing
- 2.1.2 Nitro Product Packaging
- 2.1.3 Default Installation Directory and Subdirectories
2.1.1 Nitro Licenses and Licensing
Nitro is a licensed software product that requires licenses conveyed via a license file and managed by the RLM license server in order to execute. Adaptive Computing must generate a license file for your Nitro product and you must install the license file onto the RLM server where the RLM license daemon can read it. Without the proper installation of the license file, Nitro will not execute.
Adaptive Computing licenses Nitro in two mutually-exclusive ways, by node and by core.
- Sites running parallel jobs that request multiple whole host systems (HPC compute nodes or servers) will want to license Nitro by node since their schedulers often allocates job resources by whole hosts for speed.
- Sites running mainly serial (single-core) jobs that request one or a few cores will want to license Nitro by core since their schedulers tend to fragment host system resources such that it may be very difficult for a Nitro job to obtain whole host systems.
The Nitro license file indicates the license model, by-node or by-core, the Nitro product will operate under.
With Nitro 2.0, you will need access to an RLM Server for licensing.
A Nitro Web Services interface is also introduced with 2.0. Moab Viewpoint requires Nitro Web Services to track Nitro job status.
Depending on your system configuration, you may need some or all of the components. The Nitro Download page includes bundles that let you download all the components.
Nitro Web Services is currently not available for SUSE 11-based systems; it is not in the Tarball or RPM bundles for that OS.
The RLM Server is included in the bundles as a courtesy. If your company already has access to an RLM (for example, you installed one as part of your Remote Visualization package), you will not need to install another RLM Server.
2.1.3 Default Installation Directory and Subdirectories
Nitro will be installed to the /opt/nitro directory by default. This directory includes the following subdirectories.
# cd /opt/nitro
# ls -l
drwxr-xr-x. 2 root root 4096 Jun 9 16:20 bin
drwxr-xr-x. 6 root root 4096 Jun 9 16:20 scripts
drwxr-xr-x. 1 root root 4096 Jun 9 16:20 etc
- The bin directory contains the binary executable program files and executable scripts that make up the Nitro product for your site.
- The scripts directory contains reference launch_nitro.sh scripts for different job schedulers and resource managers, which include Cray ALPS with Torque or Slurm, Platform LSF, Slurm, and Torque (Moab and Maui schedulers).
- The etc directory contains the nitro.cfg file. Nitro has some default settings that can be changed by setting values in the /opt/nitro/etc/nitro.cfg file. See 3.2 Nitro Configuration File for more information.