Types of clusters deployed by Omnia

Omnia can deploy and configure PowerEdge servers (nodes), and build clusters that use Slurm or Kubernetes (or both) for workload management. Apart from the general compute nodes of the cluster, a cluster deployed by Omnia has the following node:

Omnia Infrastructure Manager (OIM): The OIM is like a central node in a cluster, separate from the actual computing nodes. It acts as the main hub of the cluster, hosting the Omnia provisioning and monitoring tool. When setting up the cluster, the Omnia repository is copied and downloaded to the OIM.

Service Kubernetes cluster

Components of a Kubernetes cluster are:

Head node: In a Kubernetes cluster deployed by Omnia, the head node is nothing but the kube_control_plane used to manage Kubernetes jobs on the cluster.
Compute nodes: In a Kubernetes cluster, the ``kube_node``(s) function as the compute nodes.
etcd node: Etcd is an open-source distributed key-value store that is used to store and manage the information that distributed systems need for their operations. It stores the configuration data, state data, and metadata in Kubernetes.

Slurm cluster

Components of a Slurm cluster are:

Head node: In an HPC cluster, the head node is nothing but the slurm_control_node used to manage slurm jobs on the cluster.
Compute nodes: In an HPC cluster, a compute node is nothing but a slurm_node.
[Optional] Login node: In Omnia, a login node serves as an extra layer of authentication. Users are required to authenticate themselves through this additional login node, which is configured by Omnia. This setup allows the cluster administrator to limit direct access to the head node (also referred to as slurm_control_node) by users. The login node acts as a gateway for users to securely access the cluster.

Note

If a login node is not present in a Slurm cluster, then only users with access to the head node can submit Slurm jobs.

If you have any feedback about Omnia documentation, please reach out at omnia.readme@dell.com.