Béluga
Attention
As of July 31, 2025, Béluga has been replaced by the new cluster named Rorqual.
| Availability: | March 2019 to June 2026 |
| Login node: | beluga.alliancecan.ca |
| Globus Collection: | computecanada#beluga-dtn |
| Data transfer node (rsync, scp, sftp,...): | beluga.alliancecan.ca |
| Portal: | https://portail.beluga.calculquebec.ca/ |
Béluga is a heterogeneous and versatile cluster designed for general-purpose computing; it is located at École de technologie supérieure. Its name recalls the beluga whale, a marine mammal living in the waters of the St. Lawrence River.
Characteristics¶
Our policy dictates that Beluga compute nodes do not have internet access. To request an exception, please contact technical support explaining your needs and reasons. Note that the crontab tool is not available.
Each job should run for at least one hour (or at least five minutes for test jobs), and a user cannot have more than 1000 jobs (running and pending) at a time. The maximum job duration is 7 days (168 hours).
Storage¶
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| HOME
Lustre filesystem, 105 TB total space | * This space is small and cannot be expanded; you will need to use your project space for large storage needs.
* Small fixed quotas per user.
* Automatic daily backups. |
| SCRATCH
Lustre filesystem, 2.6 PB total space | * Large space for temporary files during calculations.
* No automatic backup system.
* Large fixed quotas per user.
* Automatic purging of old files from this space. |
| PROJECT
Lustre filesystem, 25 PB total space | * This space is designed for sharing data among group members and for storing large amounts of data.
* Large adjustable quotas per project.
* Automatic daily backups. |
For data transfers via Globus, the computecanada#beluga-dtn endpoint should be used, while for tools like rsync and scp, a login node can be used.
High-Performance Networking¶
The Mellanox Infiniband EDR (100 Gb/s) network connects all cluster nodes. A central 324-port switch aggregates island connections with a maximum blocking factor of 5:1. Storage servers are connected with a non-blocking interconnect. The architecture supports multiple parallel jobs with up to 640 cores (or more) thanks to non-blocking networking. For larger jobs, the blocking factor is 5:1; even for jobs spanning multiple islands, the interconnect provides high performance.
Node Characteristics¶
Note: As of July 31, 2025, all nodes below are powered off.
| nodes | cores | available memory | CPU | storage | GPU |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 160 | 40 | 92G or 95000M | 2 x Intel Gold 6148 Skylake @ 2.4 GHz | 1 x SSD of 480G | - |
| 579 | 40 | 186G or 191000M | 2 x Intel Gold 6148 Skylake @ 2.4 GHz | 1 x SSD of 480G | - |
| 10 | 6 x SSD of 480G | ||||
| 51 | 40 | 752G or 771000M | 2 x Intel Gold 6148 Skylake @ 2.4 GHz | 1 x SSD of 480G | - |
| 2 | 6 x SSD of 480G | ||||
| 172 | 40 | 186G or 191000M | 2 x Intel Gold 6148 Skylake @ 2.4 GHz | 1 x 1.6T NVMe SSD | 4 x NVidia V100SXM2 (16G memory), connected via NVLink |
- To get a larger
$SLURM_TMPDIRspace, you must request--tmp=xG, wherexis a value between 350 and 2490.
Job Monitoring¶
From the former Beluga Metrix portal, it was possible to monitor CPU and GPU compute jobs in "real-time" or past jobs to maximize resource utilization and reduce queue waiting times.
For each job, you could visualize: * CPU core utilization; * Memory usage; * GPU utilization;
It is important to utilize allocated resources and adjust your requests when compute resources are underused or not used at all. For example, if you request four CPU cores but only use one, you should adjust your submission file accordingly.