VisQueue

Abstract

Monitoring a supercomputer’s performance is vital for high performance computing (HPC) support and development, often its users, and even appreciated by the general public. Identifying the effectiveness of a system is key for its host institution’s confidence and credibility, and accounting for necessary operational funding. Tracking the research topics and sciences which dominate a system’s time and CPU can help guide decisions regarding design and support for both current and future system resources. This information is also useful for those whose tasks are to inform users, collaborators, and the general public about a system’s utilization. Applications that monitor and display system performance, often in substantial detail, are essential. Yet mining the components and quantity of performance statistics can be a challenge. Additionally, the data is usually not linked to available potentially useful stats from a system’s user database like project abstracts and principal investigator (PI). This paper introduces VisQueue, an interactive dashboard for exploring HPC systems. Its users initially see an array of the included supercomputers, each represented with an interactive sunburst chart and correlated data table. Each computer’s currently active projects are listed with science domain, running jobs, and utilized resources. Users can explore the projects and also reference a system’s specifications. These pages include graphs of available metrics, a table for exploring all projects that have utilized the system, and a map showing user locations and outreach. Our motivation was to create something not only useful for HPC maintenance staff, but easy for the general public to understand impact and importance of HPC resources. Careful consideration was taken to include only the information that was necessary and not overwhelm the user with too many choices or details.