Run relax at Google Cloud Computing

Background

This follows the same idea as from Run relax at cloud.sagemath.com

Make a rapid deployment of relax on a google computer cluster, and calculate for 2 months with 8 CPU's, for free.

Pricing

For this example of Google Cloud Computing, we wan't to have access to as many computer cores as possible

• The pricing explained here: https://cloud.google.com/pricing/
• A pricing calculator is here: https://cloud.google.com/products/calculator/

At November 2015, google give free trial of 300$. https://cloud.google.com/free-trial/

Note, there are some limitations:

• https://cloud.google.com/free-trial/docs/free-trial-quotas
• https://cloud.google.com/free-trial/#/faq

For this time, the most important limitation is 8 CPUs.

8 CPU's

For the price calculation of:

• 1 server
• using Free: Debian, CentOS, ...
• with a regular VM Class
• Instance type of (HIGH CPU) n1-highcpu-8 (vCPUs: 8, RAM: 7.20 GB)
• 0 SSD
• Datacenter location United States
• Average days per month each server is running: 1 days, per month.

This 1 day price was of November 2015, $8.06. Constantly running is $171.70 per month.

This essentially gives you 2 months of free computation with 8 CPU's.

Start free trial

Please first see this video:

• https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/linux-quickstart or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnEhYaUY4sA

Go to: https://cloud.google.com/free-trial/ and click Start your free trial.

You need to sign up with a credit card. To prevent mis-abuse from robots and hackers.

Then go to: https://console.developers.google.com

• You should already have a project called My First Project.
• Create a new project in top right corner of the browser under the dropdown of My First Project.
• Call the new project name relax, Project ID relax-1, App Engine location at us-central. NOTE: App engine HAS TO BE located in united states, if datalab should be enabled later.

Create a Virtual Machine instance

• Go to https://console.developers.google.com/home
• In the top right corner, there is a link to Activate Google Cloud Shell.
• Clicking this should start a terminal in half the window.

Links

• See examples here
• instance creation examples here
• Google zones

# List all compute instances in the project
gcloud compute instances list
gcloud compute zones list
gcloud compute machine-types list | grep us-central1-a 

# Create instance
gcloud compute instances create relax --zone us-central1-a --machine-type n1-highcpu-8 --image ubuntu-14-04 --boot-disk-size 10GB

Access Virtual Machine instance

• Go to https://console.developers.google.com/compute
• In the line of relax, click SSH
• This should open a browser terminal window

Install packages at server

For rapid deployment use this command. This will install current version of relax and trunk. See it here

sudo curl http://svn.gna.org/viewcvs/*checkout*/relax/trunk/devel_scripts/deploy_google_computing_ubuntu.sh | bash

Check installation of relax

mpirun --np 8 relax_trunk --multi='mpi4py'
relax_trunk --time -x

Transfer files back and forth to the server

Se

• https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/tutorials/transfer-files

Install gcloud

See https://cloud.google.com/sdk/

On your own computer

cd $HOME/Downloads
curl https://sdk.cloud.google.com | bash
source $HOME/.bash_profile
gcloud init

This will start a browser to authenticate you. When it ask for a ID, just write "test" and say no to cloning.

Then go to:

• https://console.developers.google.com/compute
• In the line of relax, click SSH, and drop down to: View gcloud command.

It could look like this. Try this in your own terminal. This should make some SSH keys and bring you to the server

gcloud compute --project "relax-1" ssh --zone "us-central1-f" "relax"

This should bring you to the google server.

lscpu
cat $HOME/.ssh/authorized_keys 
exit

# At your own computer
ls -l $HOME/.ssh/google*
cat $HOME/.ssh/config
ssh-add -l
ssh-add $HOME/.ssh/google_compute_engine
ssh-add -l

Copy files

See: https://cloud.google.com/sdk/gcloud/reference/compute/copy-files

The ssh command was

bash
PROJ=relax-1
ZONE=us-central1-f
PRID=relax
GCC=gcc
gcloud compute --project $PROJ ssh --zone $ZONE $PRID

We make a test file and copy it

touch test.txt
gcloud compute --project $PROJ copy-files test.txt $PRID:~ --zone $ZONE

# Try a directory
mkdir testdir
cp test.txt testdir
gcloud compute --project $PROJ copy-files testdir $PRID:~ --zone $ZONE

# Back again
cd testdir
gcloud compute --project $PROJ copy-files $PRID:~/testdir . --zone $ZONE

ssh-config with gcloud

See https://cloud.google.com/sdk/gcloud/reference/compute/config-ssh

gcloud compute config-ssh makes SSHing to virtual machine instances easier by adding an alias for each instance to the user SSH configuration (~/.ssh/config) file.

gcloud compute --project $PROJ config-ssh
cat $HOME/.ssh/config

# ssh in
ssh $PRID.$ZONE.$PROJ
exit

# Use sed to change value of your local computes ssh config file
grep "$PRID.$ZONE.$PROJ" $HOME/.ssh/config
sed "s/$PRID.$ZONE.$PROJ/$GCC/g" $HOME/.ssh/config
sed -i.bak "s/$PRID.$ZONE.$PROJ/$GCC/g" $HOME/.ssh/config
ls -l $HOME/.ssh/config*
grep "$GCC" $HOME/.ssh/config
ssh $GCC
exit

Use scp and rsync when gcloud has been ssh-config configured

#First fast check
touch test2.txt
scp test2.txt  $GCC:
ssh $GCC
ls
exit

# Or use rsync
mkdir dirtest
rsync --progress -avzhe ssh ./dirtest $GCC:
ssh $GCC
ls
rmdir dirtest
exit

STOP the google instance after test to stop the billing of computation

See: https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/instances/stopping-or-deleting-an-instance

By browser

Go to:

• https://console.developers.google.com/compute
• Tick the relax project and click the "Stop" button.

By terminal

# Get at list of projects
gcloud compute --project $PROJ instances list

# Start it, it takes 30 seconds.
gcloud compute --project $PROJ instances start --zone $ZONE $PRID
ssh $GCC
exit

# Stop it through terminal
gcloud compute --project $PROJ instances stop --zone $ZONE $PRID
# This should now not work
ssh $GCC

Upgrade account

To use 32 CPU's you need to upgrade your account

See

• https://cloud.google.com/free-trial/docs/upgrade-paid-account
• https://console.developers.google.com/compute/quotas
• https://cloud.google.com/free-trial/docs/free-trial-quotas

Deploy google datalab to your server

Read more here: http://techcrunch.com/2015/10/13/google-launches-cloud-datalab-an-interactive-tool-for-exploring-and-visualizing-data

Note: Cloud Datalab uses AppEngine and Managed VMs beta, which is available in the US region only.
You cannot change the location after the project has been created.
See Location at: https://appengine.google.com/

Start your server:

gcloud compute --project $PROJ instances start --zone $ZONE $PRID
ssh $GCC

Cloud Datalab is deployed as an Google App Engine application module in a Google Developers Console project. Click here to → Enable the Google Compute Engine API.

Visit:

• https://cloud.google.com/datalab
• https://cloud.google.com/datalab/getting-started

Do the following

• Launch datalab
• Sign in
• Deploy to your project. This takes 10 min.