Configuration MDCS

Introduction

In general, jobs on the HPC clusters FLOW and HERO have to be submitted via the Sun Grid Engine (SGE), which takes care of sharing the available resources (mainly CPU cores and memory). For Matlab jobs, the Matlab Distributed Compute Server (MDCS) provides an easier interface for users running Matlab on their local computer (refered to as the client). Basically, a few Matlab commands on the client generate a set of files, which are transfered to the cluster, where an SGE job is submitted. Once this job is completed, the results are automatically transfered back to the client.

Obviously, in order for the process to work, some configurations on the client side have to made. The configurations are explained below.

Currently, the details of the configuration depend on the version of Matlab used. For version R2011b and earlier, please refer to this guide. For R2014b and later, read on below.

Prerequisites

The following preparations are required before the configuration of the client can be done:

1. Install a version of Matlab that is supported on the cluster on your local machine (the client). The currently supported versions are R2011b and R2014b. To install Matlab, please refer to instructions on the web page of the IT services (under Academic License follow the link to the download section - a login is required).

System-wide Integration

1. Download the MDCS SGE-integration files appropriate for the version of Matlab that you want to use:
   • Matlab R2011b (and earlier):
   • Matlab R2014b (and later): MDCS_SGE-Integration_R2014b.zip