Checking Distributed Compute Setup

Make sure you have WAT version 1.1 or higher installed in C:\Programs in both the Controller and Compute nodes.  

Once the Controller Node and Compute Node dependencies have been placed in their respective directories, check that the nodes were set up correctly and that the controller node can link to the compute nodes. 

To check that the controller node is functioning, open HEC-WAT where the controller resides.  Select Tools → Simulation Compute Engine Manager and the Simulation Compute Manager window should open.

Under Nodes Present, there should be 1 node present which is indicating the controller node.  Once this is confirmed, move on to check the compute node has been properly set.

On the compute node VM, click on the computenode.bat.  A command window should appear.  Keep this window open.

Once the command window appears, go to the out.log file located in C:\Users\<UserName>\AppData\Local\Temp and check that the "Ignite" jar has been properly called. You should see the Ignite logo in the out.log file.

Once you confirmed both the controller and compute nodes are properly set up, head back to your controller node and open the Simulation Compute Engine Manger.  The Nodes Present should now show a value of 2 (one node is the controller node, one node for the compute node).  If you have two compute nodes configured, you will see a value of 3 and so on.  You have completed your Distributed Compute set up and can begin your FRA simulation.

Running a Simulation with Distributed Compute

Prior to running any models, it is recommended that you create a Projects folder on your Controller Node under "C:\" and place all models here.

Before beginning a Distributed Compute simulation, check to make sure a simulation for your selected model has not already been run and results exists in your project.  To review this, head over to your projects folder and open the runs folder.  Delete the simulation folder if one exists in both the controller and compute machine.

Once you have confirmed that the run folder is empty, open your model and then right-click on your simulation and select Compute - Simulation.

For the Compute Engine, select the drop down and select Distributed Computing.

Select Next and then Compute.

Splitting up Jobs with a distributed compute

There are two main options for splitting up a job in a distributed compute:

1. Split by Realization
2. Split by Lifecycle

These options allow for customization of how long of a job is sent to any given compute node. In general we advise to split the jobs by lifecycle so that more compute nodes can be leveraged.