In this section, you create a cluster based on the specifications defined in the configuration file. To create a cluster, you use the command pcluster create-cluster.
In your AWS Cloud9 terminal, run the following to create a cluster. Make sure that the configuration file path is pointing to the my-cluster-config.yaml file created in the previous section. The Cluster name in this workshop is set within this line as hpc-lab.
pcluster create-cluster --cluster-name hpc-lab --suppress-validators ALL --cluster-configuration my-cluster-config.yaml
The cluster creation process will take ~10 minutes. Below is typical of the expected output after enter is pushed.
{
"cluster": {
"clusterName": "hpc-lab",
"cloudformationStackStatus": "CREATE_IN_PROGRESS",
"cloudformationStackArn": "arn:aws:cloudformation:eu-west-1:123456789:stack/hpc-lab/e47e8d00-e5df-11ed-b0eb-0604f1a65783",
"region": "eu-west-1",
"version": "3.5.1",
"clusterStatus": "CREATE_IN_PROGRESS",
"scheduler": {
"type": "slurm"
}
}
}
If you want to see whether the create is in progress, you can use the list-clusters command:
pcluster list-clusters
This will show whether create is still in progress or completed. Do not wait for the cluster creation to complete; please proceed in the workshop instructions.
While it is possible to have multiple clusters within one account, each cluster has to have a unique (for that account) name. That is, two clusters in an account cannot have the same name. If a cluster is deleted, the name can be reused.
When the pcluster create-cluster command is executed, AWS ParallelCluster generates an AWS CloudFormation template to generate an infrastructure in AWS. The bulk of the work is done in AWS and once the create is launched, you don’t need to keep AWS ParallelCluster running.
In the next section you’ll take a look at a visual alternative to the command line interface for deploying and managing your clusters called ParallelCluster UI.