ANSYS Electronics Job Submission using Interactive Workstations

Introduction

Workstations create a seamless HPC experience on Rescale. They consist of a batch compute cluster with desktop visualization capability on the head node of your cluster. It provides a user interface for users to interact with the job setup directly from the analysis software.

Features of Workstations

  • Enables you to work with your batch job submission interactively. You can monitor jobs on the fly
  • Enables you to distribute your batch job submission across the entire cluster using an automated process
  • You can pause the analysis at anytime, edit the inputs or parameters of the job and either restart or rerun the analysis
  • Job results can be viewed during and right after completion of the simulation without any delays
  • Files are automatically synced from the batch job to the desktop session and vice-versa
  • There is no additional charges for the visualization

Key Notes

  • The desktop session is Linux (some software can run on Windows as well)
  • The files are synced to the work directory of the desktop session
  • Users need to explicitly terminate the job to shutdown the cluster
  • Session files should to be saved to the work folder, after which they will be uploaded to the job files under Results on the platform

ANSYS Electronics Tutorial

This tutorial shows how to submit an ANSYS Workbench job using a workstation as well as showing you how to set up an ANSYS Workbench project with a parameter sweep on a 2 node cluster.

Users that submit jobs to the workstation, are limited to the resources on the workstation. ANSYS provides an option to scale up and submit jobs to a larger, remote cluster. However, the workflow is complicated. Workstations automate this process and hence provides the option to submit jobs to a large cluster with ease. ANSYS Optimization and Parameter sweeps are complicated and workstations provide a seamless methodology to run such jobs on the Rescale platform.

The steps are as follows:

  • Click on Workstations on the left pane, and select New Workstation in the center pane.
  • Name the job: In this case, ANSYS Tutorial
  • In the search box under Select Software, search for ANSYS Interactive, and select the ANSYS Interactive Workflow tile
  • In the new Analysis Options box, select the Version as 2019 R2
  • Select the deired licensing option:
    • If you are using a Rescale License, you may select the Use On-Demand License by checking the box as shown below. Also, check the box to agree to the Software Licensing Agreement.
    • Alternatively, users using their own licenses may select the Use Existing License and specify the relevant licensing information.
  • Select the Hardware box to start hardware selection
  • Select the hardware configuration that you would like to run your simulation on. In this example, we search for and select the Emerald hardware as shown below
  • Increase the core count until you obtain 2 nodes of Emerald
  • Set a suitable wall time so that the cluster will be terminated after the simulation
  • Select the Attachments box to start file selection
  • Select the Upload from this computer to upload your Workbench project files to the job
  • You may now select Submit at the upper right to start the job
    • You may need to select a project on a right-hand panel for the submit button to become active (not shown)

Once the job is launched, you will notice that it looks very similar to a batch job, but differs in that there is an additional button to Connect on the top right of the screen

  • Click on the Status button to view the progress of the job submission
  • Click on Connect on the top right of the screen. This will open an in-browser desktop session for workstations that is running Linux.
  • Once the Desktop is launched, you will see the icon for ANSYS Electronics Desktop. Click on the icon to launch
e2e-launch-ansys-electronics
  • Once ANSYS Electronics is launched, click on Open. Browse to the shared folder as shown below and select the input file. Click on Open. Note that the input file can be .aedt or .aedtz
e2e-open-hfss-job
  • The Project Manager tree will be displayed on the top left. In this example, we will be solving a parametric sweep found under the Optimetrics entry in the project tree. Navigate to Optimetrics and then to Parametric Setup. Right click on it and click on Submit Job
e2e-submit-job
  • The will open the Submit Job dialog box. Click on Compute Resources tab on the top
e2e-submit-job-options
  • Click on the Import button and navigate to the cluster_config.areg file located on the Desktop. The cluster_config.areg is auto-generated on cluster start up and contains cluster IP addresses and number of cores on each node. Click on the file and click Open
e2e-cluster-file

The information from the config file into the dialog box. Please note that when the Use automatic settings checkbox is checked, the tasks are auto-distributed. When unchecked, you can specify the numbers of tasks to solve simultaneously. In the example here, we are auto-distributing the tasks, so the box is checked

  • Click on Submit Job
  • On the dialog box that opens, click on Yes to close the project
e2e-submit-aedt-job
  • A dialog box will be displayed with the message that the job has been submitted. Check the box next to Begin monitoring this job now and click on OK
e2e-job-submitted
  • Next, the Monitor Job dialog box will be displayed. In the Messages window on the bottom left, you will see status messages regarding the jobs
    • The Progress tab indicates the Analysis progress
      e2e-status-message
  • The Profile tab on the tab should show additional information like regarding the analysis
  • Once the job is completed solving, you can click on Close button on the Monitor Job dialog box
e2e-job-profile
  • To view the results, click on Open and browse to the shared directory. Click on the .aedt file and click on Open. Note that the input file can be .aedt or .aedtz
e2e-open-solved-job
  • On the Project Manager tree, right click on Parametric Setup and click on View/Analyze Results
e2e-results
  • The files are automatically saved to the work folder
  • Terminate the job to end the Desktop session. Any files saved to the work folder will be uploaded to the job files under Results on the platform