Execo Practical Session

Overview

The goal of this practical session is to show how to use execo ([1]) to quickly and easily prototype / develop reproducible experiments. The aim in this session is to show the issues of experiment development as faced by typical experimenters, when using grid5000, and how execo can help them being more productive and getting more reproducible results.

This practical session will start by showing how to use execo to interactively develop the different steps of an experiment, then it will show how to use execo to transform this prototype in a fully automatic, configurable, robust experiment engine, producing reproducible results, and able to run on a much larger parameters space.

Tool: execo

execo offers a Python API for local or remote, standalone or parallel, unix processes execution . It is especially well suited for quickly and easily scripting workflows of parallel/distributed operations on local or remote hosts: automate a scientific workflow, conduct computer science experiments, perform automated tests, etc. The core python package is execo. The execo_g5k package provides a set of tools and extensions for the grid5000 testbed. The execo_engine package provides tools to ease the development of computer sciences experiments.

Tutorial requirements

This tutorial requires users to know basic python and be reasonably familiar with grid5000 usage (this is not an absolute beginner session). During the tutorial, users will need to reserve a few nodes on at least two different clusters.

Detailed session program

The use case (the experiment which we will use as a support to illustrate execo functionality) is to benchmark an MPI application on different grid5000 clusters.

execo introduction

slides

execo installation

On a grid5000 frontend, run:

$ export http_proxy="http://proxy:3128"
$ export https_proxy="http://proxy:3128"
$ easy_install --user execo

To check that everything is setup correctly, run a simple hello world:

$ ipython
In [1]: import execo
In [2]: execo.Process("echo 'hello, world'").run().stdout
Out[2]: 'hello, world\n'

Prototype the experiment interactively

Let's start by creating a directory for the tutorial, on the frontend:

$ mkdir ~/execo_tutorial && cd ~/execo_tutorial

From now on, all commands prefixed by >>> are to be run in a python shell, preferably ipython, which is more user-friendly. All python sessions should import the execo modules:

$ ipython
>>> from execo import *
>>> from execo_g5k import *
>>> from execo_engine import *

The experiment

We will run the LU benchmark (Lower-Upper symmetric Gauss-Seidel) from the NAS Parallel Benchmark, which solves a system of nonlinear PDE. We will run this benchmark using MPI for parallelization over several cores. This benchmark can run on several problem sizes (named A, B, C, etc.). This benchmark must be configured, at compilation time, knowing the number of cores used in parallel and the problem sizes.

The NAS Parallel Benchmark suite can be downloaded from [here] but downloading involves registering, so for the convenience of the tutorial, we have put the archive [here].

We'll start by prototyping the experiment interactively. Some of the following steps can easily be performed without execo, but we use execo because in the end we will automate everything. For each execo function or class used, you can always look at the documentation in the [Execo API documentation]

Reserve some grid5000 compute nodes

Let's reserve some nodes on a site, for example lyon:

>>> jobs = oarsub([(OarSubmission("cluster=1/nodes=2",
...                               walltime=7200,
...                               job_type="allow_classic_ssh"), "lyon")])
>>> jobs
[(<jobid>, 'lyon')]

We can get informations on the job:

>>> get_oar_job_info(*jobs[0])

And get the list of nodes:

>>> nodes = get_oar_job_nodes(*jobs[0])
>>> nodes
[Host('<node1>.lyon.grid5000.fr'),
 Host('<node2>.lyon.grid5000.fr')]

Configure, compile and install the benchmark program on one node

We will use one of the NPB bench, namely a LU decomposition, that performs a linear system solver. Downloading the benchmark, extract it:

$ wget --no-check-certificate https://api.grid5000.fr/sid/sites/lyon/public/lpouilloux/NPB3.3-MPI.tar.bz2
$ tar -xjf NPB3.3-MPI.tar.bz2

Prior to compiling it, we must configure the build according to the total number of cores and the problem sizes which will be used. So we first need to retrieve the numbe of core of the cluster thanks to the grid5000 API:

>>> n_core = get_host_attributes(nodes[0])['architecture']['smt_size']
>>> total_core = n_core * len(nodes)
>>> total_core
<num total cores>

>>> conf = Process('echo "lu\tA\t%i" > NPB3.3-MPI/config/suite.def' % total_core)
>>> conf.shell = True
>>> conf.run()

Now compile it on a node (not on a frontend, because it's forbidden ;-)... and because we need mpif77):

>>> compilation = SshProcess('cd execo_tutorial/NPB3.3-MPI && make clean && make suite', nodes[0])
>>> compilation.run()

We can see a summary of the compilation process:

>>> print compilation

It should be ok:

>>> compilation.ok

We can also have a detailed look at compilation outputs if needed:

>>> print compilation.stdout
>>> print compilation.stderr

The program is ready to be run.

Run the benchmark program

>>> bench = SshProcess('mpirun -H %s -n %i --mca pml ob1 --mca btl tcp,self ~/execo_tutorial/NPB3.3-MPI/bin/lu.A.%i' % (
...                        ",".join([node.address for node in nodes]),
...                        total_core, total_core),
...                    nodes[0]) 
>>> bench.run()
>>> bench.ok
>>> print bench.stdout

Release your resources

>>> oardel(jobs)

Transform this prototype in an automated experiment engine

In this section, we show how each step previously interactively prototyped can be integrated in a fully scripted experiment engine.

The skeleton: an empty (yet) experiment engine

Execo ships with a generic Engine class which is well-suited for automatizing an experimental workflow with varying parameters. We define and inherit from it our experiment engine.

Open a file and define a new engine:

from execo_engine import engine, ParamSweeper

class mpi_bench(Engine)

   def run(self):
       """Inherited method, put here the code for running the engine"""
       self.define_parameters()
       if self.prepare_bench():
           self.run_xp()
 
   def define_parameters(self):
       """Create the iterator that contains the parameters to be explored """
       pass

   def prepare_bench(self):
       """Copy required files on frontend(s) and compile bench suite, adapted for 
       the clusters to be benchmarked """
       pass

   def run_xp(self):
       """Iterate over the parameters and execute the bench """
       pass

Define the parameters space

Implement the method define_parameters using, for example:

   def define_parameters(self):
       """Create the iterator that contains the parameters to be explored """
       # Choose a list of clusters
       self.n_nodes = 4
       #clusters = ['graphene', 'petitprince', 'edel', 'paradent', 'stremi']
       clusters = ['petitprince', 'paradent']
       # Determine the maximum number of cores 
       max_core = self.n_nodes * max([get_host_attributes(cluster + '-1')['architecture']['smt_size']
             for cluster in clusters])
       self.parameters = {
           'cluster' : clusters,
           'n_core': filter(lambda i: i >= self.n_nodes,
                            list(takewhile(lambda i: i<max_core,
                                           (2**i for i in count(0, 1))))),
           'size' : ['A']
           }
       logger.info(self.parameters)
       self.sweeper = ParamSweeper(os.path.join(self.result_dir, "sweeps"), sweep(self.parameters))
       logger.info('Number of parameters combinations %s', len(self.sweeper.get_remaining()))

Prepare the bench

We need to:

• compile the bench:
  • reserve a node
  • extract the bench tgz
  • configure bench compilation (data size, num nodes)
  • compile the bench
  • copy the compiled bench to all frontends

   def prepare_bench(self):
       """Copy required files on frontend(s) and compile bench suite, adapted for 
       the clusters to be benchmarked """
       logger.info("preparation: configure and compile benchmark")
       sites = list(set(map(get_cluster_site, self.parameters['cluster'])))
       copy_bench = Put(sites, ['NPB3.3-MPI.tar.bz2']).run()
       extract_bench = Remote('tar -xjf NPB3.3-MPI.tar.bz2', sites).run()
       
       bench_list = '\n'.join([ 'lu\t%s\t%s' % (size, n_core)
                                for n_core in self.parameters['n_core']
                                for size in self.parameters['size'] ])
       # Reserving a node because compiling on the frontend is forbidden
       jobs = oarsub([(OarSubmission(resources = "nodes=1",
                                   job_type = 'allow_classic_ssh',
                                   walltime ='0:10:00'), sites[0])])
       if jobs[0][0]:
           try:
               wait_oar_job_start(*jobs[0])
               nodes = get_oar_job_nodes(*jobs[0])
               conf_bench = Remote('echo "%s" > ~/NPB3.3-MPI/config/suite.def' % bench_list, nodes).run()
               compilation = Remote('cd NPB3.3-MPI && make clean && make suite', nodes).run()
           except:
               logger.error("unable to compile bench")
               return False
           finally:
               oardel(jobs)
       # Copying binaries to all other frontends
       frontends = sites[1:]
       rsync = Remote('rsync -avuP ~/NPB3.3-MPI/ Template:Frontends:NPB3.3-MPI', 
           [get_host_site(nodes[0])] * len(frontends)) 
       rsync.run()
       return compilation.ok

Create the experimental workflow

   def run_xp(self):
       """Iterate over the parameters and execute the bench """
       while len(self.sweeper.get_remaining()) > 0:
           comb = self.sweeper.get_next()
           if comb['n_core'] > get_host_attributes(comb['cluster']+'-1')['architecture']['smt_size'] * self.n_nodes: 
               self.sweeper.skip(comb)
               continue
           logger.info('Processing new combination %s' % (comb,))
           site = get_cluster_site(comb['cluster'])
           jobs = oarsub([(OarSubmission(resources = "{cluster='" + comb['cluster']+"'}/nodes=" + str(self.n_nodes),
                                         job_type = 'allow_classic_ssh', 
                                         walltime ='0:10:00'), 
                           site)])
           if jobs[0][0]:
               try:
                   wait_oar_job_start(*jobs[0])
                   nodes = get_oar_job_nodes(*jobs[0])
                   bench_cmd = 'mpirun -H %s -n %i %s ~/NPB3.3-MPI/bin/lu.%s.%i' % (
                       ",".join([node.address for node in nodes]),
                       comb['n_core'],
                       get_mpi_opts(comb['cluster']),
                       comb['size'],
                       comb['n_core'])
                   lu_bench = SshProcess(bench_cmd, nodes[0])
                   lu_bench.stdout_handlers.append(self.result_dir + '/' + slugify(comb) + '.out')
                   lu_bench.run()
                   if lu_bench.ok:
                       logger.info("comb ok: %s" % (comb,))
                       self.sweeper.done(comb)
                       continue
               finally:
                   oardel(jobs)
           logger.info("comb NOT ok: %s" % (comb,))
           self.sweeper.cancel(comb)

Launch the engine

Just add the following lines to make your engine runable:

if __name__ == "__main__":
    engine = mpi_bench()
    engine.start()

You can then run it with a simple command such as

$ ipython -i -- ./mpi_bench.py