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Infrastructure servers are used to administer the system and provide user access. They are not typically involved in computation, but they provide services that are critical to the overall HPC system. These servers are used as the head nodes and the login nodes. For small sized clusters, a single physical server can provide the necessary system management functions. Infrastructure servers can also be used to provide storage services by using NFS, in which case they must be configured with additional disk drives or an external storage array. One head node is mandatory for an HPC system to deploy and manage the system. If high-availability (HA) management functionality is required, two head nodes are necessary. Login nodes are optional and one login server per 30-100 users is recommended.
A recommended base configuration for infrastructure servers is:
The recommended base configuration for the infrastructure server is described as follows. The PowerEdge R6515 server is suited for this role. Typical HPC clusters will only require a few infrastructure servers; therefore, density is not a priority, but manageability is important. The AMD EPYC 7313P processor, with 16 cores per socket, is suitable for this role. If the infrastructure server will be used for CPU intensive tasks, such as compiling software or processing data, then a more capable processor may be appropriate. 128GB of RAM provided by eight 16GB DIMMs provides sufficient memory capacity, while also providing good memory bandwidth. These servers are not expected to perform much I/O, but reliability is important, so two mixed-use SATA SSDs in RAID1 configuration are recommended for the operating system. For small systems (typically four nodes or less), an Ethernet network may provide sufficient application performance. For most other systems, HDR InfiniBand is likely to be the data interconnect of choice, which provides a high-throughput, low-latency fabric for node-to-node communications or access to Validated Designs for HPC Storage.