Star-CCM+

STAR-CCM+ is a multidisciplinary engineering simulation suite to model acoustics, fluid dynamics, heat transfer, rheology, multiphase flows, particle flows, solid mechanics, reacting flows, electrochemistry, and electromagnetics. It is developed by Siemens.

License limitations

We have the authorization to host STAR-CCM+ binaries on our servers, but we don't provide licenses. You will need to have your own license in order to use this software. A remote POD license can be purchased directly from Siemens. Alternatively, a local license hosted at your institution can be used, providing it can be accessed through the firewall from the cluster where jobs are to be run.

Configuring your account

In order to configure your account to use your own license server with our Star-CCM+ module, create a license file $HOME/.licenses/starccm.lic with

File : starccm.lic

SERVER IP ANY PORT
USE_SERVER

where you change IP and PORT with the IP address and the port used by the license server at your institution.

POD license file

Researchers who have purchased a POD license from Siemens may simply configure the following $HOME/.licenses/starccm.lic file on any of our clusters where Star-CCM+ jobs are to be run.

File : starccm.lic

SERVER flex.cd-adapco.com ANY 1999
USE_SERVER

Cluster batch job submission

Select one of the available modules:

• starccm for the double-precision flavour,
• starccm-mixed for the mixed-precision flavour.

Star-CCM+ comes bundled with two different distributions of MPI:

• IBM Platform MPI is the default distribution, but does not work on Cedar's Intel OmniPath network fabric;
• Intel MPI is specified with option -mpi intel.

Neither IBM Platform MPI nor Intel MPI are tightly coupled with our scheduler; you must therefore tell starccm+ which hosts to use by means of a file containing the list of available hosts. To produce this file, we provide the slurm_hl2hl.py script, which will output the list of hosts when called with the option --format STAR-CCM+. This list can then be written to a file and read by Star-CCM+. Also, because these distributions of MPI are not tightly integrated with our scheduler, you should use option --ntasks-per-node=1 and set --cpus-per-task to use all cores as shown in the scripts.

You will also need to set up your job environment to use your license. If you are using CD-adapco's online pay-on-usage server, the configuration is rather simple. If you are using an internal license server, please contact us so that we can help you set up the access to it.

Note that at Niagara, the compute nodes mount the $HOME filesystem as read-only. Therefore it is important to define the environment variable $STARCCM_TMP and point it to a location on $SCRATCH, which is unique to the version of StarCCM+. Otherwise, StarCCM+ will try to create such a directory in $HOME and crash in the process.

BelugaCedarGrahamNarvalNiagara

File : starccm_job.sh

#!/bin/bash
#SBATCH --account=def-group   # Specify some account
#SBATCH --time=00-01:00       # Time limit: dd-hh:mm
#SBATCH --nodes=1             # Specify 1 or more nodes
#SBATCH --cpus-per-task=40    # Request all cores per node
#SBATCH --mem=0               # Request all memory per node
#SBATCH --ntasks-per-node=1   # Do not change this value

module load StdEnv/2020       # Do not change

# module load starccm/18.02.008-R8
module load starccm-mixed/18.02.008

export LM_PROJECT='YOUR CD-ADAPCO PROJECT ID GOES HERE'
export CDLMD_LICENSE_FILE="1999@flex.cd-adapco.com"

export STARCCM_TMP="${SCRATCH}/.starccm-${EBVERSIONSTARCCM}"
mkdir -p "$STARCCM_TMP"

slurm_hl2hl.py --format STAR-CCM+ > machinefile-$SLURM_JOB_ID

NCORE=$((SLURM_NTASKS * SLURM_CPUS_PER_TASK))

starccm+ -batch -power -np $NCORE -podkey $LM_PROJECT -licpath $CDLMD_LICENSE_FILE -machinefile $PWD/machinefile-$SLURM_JOB_ID $PWD/your-file.sim

File : starccm_job.sh

#!/bin/bash
#SBATCH --account=def-group   # Specify some account
#SBATCH --time=00-01:00       # Time limit: dd-hh:mm
#SBATCH --nodes=1             # Specify 1 or more nodes
#SBATCH --cpus-per-task=48    # or 32 Request all cores per node
#SBATCH --mem=0               # Request all memory per node
#SBATCH --ntasks-per-node=1   # Do not change this value

module load StdEnv/2020       # Do not change

# module load starccm/18.02.008-R8
module load starccm-mixed/18.02.008

export LM_PROJECT='YOUR CD-ADAPCO PROJECT ID GOES HERE'
export CDLMD_LICENSE_FILE="1999@flex.cd-adapco.com"

export STARCCM_TMP="${SCRATCH}/.starccm-${EBVERSIONSTARCCM}"
mkdir -p "$STARCCM_TMP"

slurm_hl2hl.py --format STAR-CCM+ > machinefile-$SLURM_JOB_ID

NCORE=$((SLURM_NTASKS * SLURM_CPUS_PER_TASK))

starccm+ -batch -power -np $NCORE -podkey $LM_PROJECT -licpath $CDLMD_LICENSE_FILE -machinefile $PWD/machinefile-$SLURM_JOB_ID $PWD/your-file.sim -mpi intel -fabric psm2

File : starccm_job.sh

#!/bin/bash
#SBATCH --account=def-group   # Specify some account
#SBATCH --time=00-01:00       # Time limit: dd-hh:mm
#SBATCH --nodes=1             # Specify 1 or more nodes
#SBATCH --cpus-per-task=32    # or 44 Request all cores per node
#SBATCH --mem=0               # Request all memory per node
#SBATCH --ntasks-per-node=1   # Do not change this value

module load StdEnv/2020       # Do not change

# module load starccm/18.02.008-R8
module load starccm-mixed/18.02.008

export LM_PROJECT='YOUR CD-ADAPCO PROJECT ID GOES HERE'
export CDLMD_LICENSE_FILE="1999@flex.cd-adapco.com"

export STARCCM_TMP="${SCRATCH}/.starccm-${EBVERSIONSTARCCM}"
mkdir -p "$STARCCM_TMP"

slurm_hl2hl.py --format STAR-CCM+ > machinefile-$SLURM_JOB_ID

NCORE=$((SLURM_NTASKS * SLURM_CPUS_PER_TASK))

# Remove "-podkey $LM_PROJECT" from next line if using an institutional server

starccm+ -jvmargs -Xmx4G -jvmargs -Djava.io.tmpdir=$SLURM_TMPDIR -batch -power -np $NCORE -podkey $LM_PROJECT -licpath $CDLMD_LICENSE_FILE -machinefile $PWD/machinefile-$SLURM_JOB_ID $PWD/your-file.sim -mpi intel -fabric psm2

File : starccm_job.sh

#!/bin/bash
#SBATCH --account=def-group   # Specify some account
#SBATCH --time=00-01:00       # Time limit: dd-hh:mm
#SBATCH --nodes=1             # Specify 1 or more nodes
#SBATCH --cpus-per-task=64    # Request all cores per node
#SBATCH --mem=0               # Request all memory per node
#SBATCH --ntasks-per-node=1   # Do not change this value

module load StdEnv/2020       # Do not change

# module load starccm/18.02.008-R8
module load starccm-mixed/18.02.008

export LM_PROJECT='YOUR CD-ADAPCO PROJECT ID GOES HERE'
export CDLMD_LICENSE_FILE="1999@flex.cd-adapco.com"

export STARCCM_TMP="${SCRATCH}/.starccm-${EBVERSIONSTARCCM}"
mkdir -p "$STARCCM_TMP"

slurm_hl2hl.py --format STAR-CCM+ > machinefile-$SLURM_JOB_ID

NCORE=$((SLURM_NTASKS * SLURM_CPUS_PER_TASK))

starccm+ -jvmargs -Xmx4G -jvmargs -Djava.io.tmpdir=$SLURM_TMPDIR -batch -power -np $NCORE -podkey $LM_PROJECT -licpath $CDLMD_LICENSE_FILE -machinefile $PWD/machinefile-$SLURM_JOB_ID $PWD/your-file.sim -mpi openmpi

File : starccm_job.sh

#!/bin/bash

#SBATCH --time=0-00:30        # Time limit: d-hh:mm
#SBATCH --nodes=1             # Specify 1 or more nodes
#SBATCH --cpus-per-task=40    # Request all cores per node
#SBATCH --ntasks-per-node=1   # Do not change this value
#SBATCH --mail-type=BEGIN
#SBATCH --mail-type=END
 
cd $SLURM_SUBMIT_DIR

ssh nia-gw -L 1999:flex.cd-adapco.com:1999 -L 2099:flex.cd-adapco.com:2099 -N -f
export LM_PROJECT='YOUR CD-ADAPCO PROJECT ID GOES HERE'
export CDLMD_LICENSE_FILE="1999@127.0.0.1"
 
module load CCEnv
module load StdEnv/2018.3
module load starccm/13.06.012-R8

slurm_hl2hl.py --format STAR-CCM+ > $SLURM_SUBMIT_DIR/machinefile_$SLURM_JOB_ID
 
NCORE=$((SLURM_NTASKS * SLURM_CPUS_PER_TASK))
 
# Workaround for license failures. 
# Try up to 5 times to get Star-CCM+ to start by checking exit status (throws 143 when fails, 0 when works).
i=1
RET=-1
while [ $i -le 5 ] && [ $RET -ne 0 ]; do
        [ $i -eq 1 ] || sleep 5
        echo "Attempt number: "$i
        starccm+ -batch -power -np $NCORE -podkey $LM_PROJECT -machinefile $SLURM_SUBMIT_DIR/machinefile_$SLURM_JOB_ID $SLURM_SUBMIT_DIR/your-simulation-file.java $SLURM_SUBMIT_DIR/your-simulation-file.sim > $SLURM_JOB_ID.results
        RET=$?
        i=$((i+1))
   done
exit $RET

Remote visualization

Preparation

o To set up your account for remote visualization:

1. Create ~/.licenses/starccm.lic as described above
   
2. Users with a POD license should also

set: export LM_PROJECT='CD-ADAPCO PROJECT ID' and

add: -power to the other command line options shown below

Compute nodes

Connect with TigerVNC and open a terminal window ...

STAR-CCM+ 15.04.010 (or newer versions)

module load StdEnv/2020

module load starccm-mixed/17.02.007 **OR** starccm/17.02.007-R8

starccm+

STAR-CCM+ 14.06.010, 14.04.013, 14.02.012

module load StdEnv/2016

module load starccm-mixed/14.06.010 **OR** starccm/14.06.010-R8

starccm+

STAR-CCM+ 13.06.012 (or older versions)

module load StdEnv/2016

module load starccm-mixed/13.06.012 **OR** starccm/13.06.012-R8

starccm+ -mesa

VDI nodes

Connect with TigerVNC and open a terminal window (Applications -> Systems Tools -> Mate Terminal) ...

STAR-CCM+ 15.04.010 (or newer versions)

module load CcEnv StdEnv/2020

module load starccm-mixed/17.02.007 **OR** starccm/17.02.007-R8

starccm+ -clientldpreload /usr/lib64/VirtualGL/libvglfaker.so

STAR-CCM+ 14.06.013 (this version only)

module load CcEnv StdEnv/2016

module load starccm-mixed/14.06.013 **OR** starccm/14.06.013-R8

starccm+ -clientldpreload /usr/lib64/VirtualGL/libvglfaker.so

STAR-CCM+ 13.06.012 (or older versions)

module load CcEnv StdEnv/2016

module load starccm-mixed/13.06.012 **OR** starccm/13.06.012-R8

starccm+ -mesa

Message Passing Interface