EESSI/Azure sync meeting 2024-01-15

• attending: Kenneth, Martin, Hugo, Laura, Alan, Ivar
• excused: Bob

Agenda:

• in process of setting up Magic Castle cluster on Azure
  • multi-arch (x86_64 + aarch64)
  • went through some trouble to find suitable VM image
    • some licensing trouble with AlmaLinux
    • turned out it was due some specific stuff in Terraform plan
  • AMD Genoa nodes (HBv4)
    • open request to get access (in Sweden) via Martin
    • looks like it's not available yet in Sweden
    • other options: us-east, us-south-central, singapore
    • see https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/explore/global-infrastructure/products-by-region/?regions=europe-north,europe-west,us-east,us-south-central,asia-pacific-southeast,sweden-central,sweden-south&products=all
  • good regions for large variety of CPU types
    • west-eu currently in EU
    • in US: east-us, us-south-central
  • unclear when new Arm instances will be publicly available
    • Hugo can look into this
    • DP* instances, only DPv5 (Ampere) announced
    • no DP* instances in Sweden
• https://www.multixscale.eu/deliverables
• ISC'24
  • submitted 3 tutorials + BoF proposals
  • Azure is planning their attendance
    • probably more focused on tutorial sessions, etc.
• Hugo is working on integration of EESSI in Azure Machine Learning (AML)
  • GROMACS examples are working
  • waiting for GROMACS to be added to software.eessi.io (see EESSI/software-layer PR #401)
  • ~10min demo during next EESSI update meeting?
  • perhaps a dedicated meeting later
  • cfr. https://github.com/hmeiland/amlhpc
• EuroHPC User Summit in Antwerp (Mar'24)
  • hoping to set up EESSI live demo corner there
  • maybe via AML?
• EasyBuild User Meeting (https://easybuild.io/eum24)
  • agenda is wide open
  • some interest from Hugo to attend
  • looking for sponsors ;)
• initial GPU support in EESSI is in place
  • https://www.eessi.io/docs/gpu

Notes of previous meetings

• https://github.com/EESSI/meetings/wiki/Azure-meeting-2023-12-18
• https://github.com/EESSI/meetings/wiki/Azure-meeting-2023-09-18
• https://github.com/EESSI/meetings/wiki/Azure-meeting-2023-08-21
• https://github.com/EESSI/meetings/wiki/Azure-meeting-2023-06-19
• https://github.com/EESSI/meetings/wiki/Azure-meeting-2023-05-15
• https://github.com/EESSI/meetings/wiki/Azure-meeting-2023-04-17
• https://github.com/EESSI/meetings/wiki/Azure-meeting-2023-02-17
• https://github.com/EESSI/meetings/wiki/Azure-meeting-2023-01-20
• https://github.com/EESSI/meetings/wiki/Azure-meeting-Dec-9-2022