Category – Tips and Tricks

Chameleon Tickets of the Year 2024

Chameleon Support: Top Issue Areas and How to Resolve Them

Facing network issues, floating IP shortages, or login troubles on Chameleon? This blog post highlights the top challenges users encountered over the past year and shares practical tips and tricks to resolve them quickly. Learn how to tackle firewall misconfigurations, manage floating IPs efficiently, troubleshoot login errors, and more. Save time and streamline your Chameleon experience!

Building MPI Clusters on Chameleon: A Practical Guide

Simplifying Distributed Computing Setup with Jupyter, Ansible, and Python

Running distributed applications across multiple nodes is a common need in scientific computing, but setting up MPI clusters can be challenging, especially in cloud environments. In this post, we'll explore a template for creating MPI clusters on Chameleon that handles the key configuration steps automatically, letting you focus on your research rather than infrastructure setup.

Packaging Your Experiments on Chameleon with Python-chi 1.0

Streamlining Chameleon Experiments with Enhanced Python Library

Discover the powerful updates in Python-chi 1.0, Chameleon's official Python library. This new release brings improved typing, new modules for hardware and storage management, interactive Jupyter widgets, clearer error messages, and easier low-level access. Learn how these enhancements can simplify your experiment workflow, from resource allocation to data analysis. Whether you're a seasoned Chameleon user or just getting started, Python-chi 1.0 offers tools to make your research more efficient and reproducible.

"Back to School" with Chameleon

A roundup of all the recent updates to our documentation and tutorials

Welcome back, Chameleonaires! As we transition from summer to our usual routines, check out the new and improved resources for getting started with Chameleon. Our engineers have been hard at work creating new tutorials, including interactive Trovi artifacts and live sessions. We've also updated our Getting Started guide to make it easier to use Chameleon’s powerful tools. Dive into our latest Trovi artifacts and tutorials to boost your research efficiency. Happy experimenting!

Composable Hardware on Chameleon NOW!

Introducing new GigaIO nodes with A100 GPUs

Exciting news for Chameleon users! We're introducing GigaIO's composable hardware at CHI@UC and CHI@TACC. This innovative technology allows for flexible GPU configurations, supporting up to 8 GPUs per node. Learn how this new feature can enhance your research capabilities and improve hardware utilization. Discover the specifications and unique advantages of our new composable systems in this blog post.

Expanding Horizons with CHI@Edge: New Peripheral Support

Enhancing Edge Computing Research with Advanced Sensors and Cameras

This blog post introduces the latest advancements in peripheral support for the CHI@Edge research testbed. It highlights the platform's holistic approach to integrating a wide range of sensors and cameras, opening up new possibilities for edge computing experiments. The post covers recent updates to documentation and tutorials, showcasing specific peripherals like the Waveshare Sense HAT-B and the Pi Camera Module 3. It also provides real-world examples of edge computing applications in fields such as precision agriculture and marine biology. Researchers are guided through the process of utilizing these new capabilities, with links to comprehensive tutorials on GPIO, sensors, and camera …

Power Measurement and Management on Chameleon

Exploring Power Monitoring Techniques with RAPL, DCMI, and Scaphandre

Monitoring power consumption is crucial for understanding the energy efficiency of your applications and systems. In this post, we explore various techniques for measuring power usage on Chameleon nodes, including leveraging Intel's RAPL interface for fine-grained CPU and memory power data, utilizing IPMI's DCMI commands for system-level power information, and employing the Scaphandre tool for detailed per-process power monitoring and visualization. We provide practical examples and step-by-step instructions to help you get started with power measurement on Chameleon, enabling you to gain valuable insights into the energy footprint of your workloads.

Seamless SSH Container Access with CHI@Edge

Simplifying Your Development Process

Recognizing the need for easier modification of running containers, we’ve introduced a straightforward method for SSHing into CHI@Edge containers, enhancing your development and experimentation processes. Our new tutorial on Trovi helps you create an SSH-ready base container, extending the CHI@Edge “hello world” example to enable remote access. This allows you to troubleshoot, configure, and update containers as if they were real servers. Access the tutorial via the CHI@Edge dashboard, and start developing with enhanced flexibility and ease.

CHI@Edge: Transitioning from Successful Preview to Full Production

Unlock the power of edge computing with CHI@Edge - In production now!

In 2021, we introduced CHI@Edge, a cutting-edge testbed tailored to the dynamic needs of edge computing and IoT research. Our initial offerings included a robust selection of devices like Raspberry Pi 4s, Nvidia Jetson Nanos, and Jetson Xaviers, tailored for high-performance yet low-power edge computing tasks. Today, we're thrilled to announce the transition of CHI@Edge from a widely embraced preview to its official full production phase.

Understanding the New FABRIC Layer 3 Connection

Multi-site experiments with FABRIC: Sometimes Layer 3 is all you need

Discover how Chameleon's testbed capabilities have been enhanced with the introduction of the FABRIC Layer 3 connection in our new blog post. Learn about the powerful and flexible networking options it offers, how it simplifies the process of routing to FABRIC resources, and how it enables low-latency and high-bandwidth traffic routing between CHI@UC and CHI@TACC.