Profiling and analysis on separate machines

[Marcus_E_]

Hi everybody,

we're in the process of upgrading one of our servers with a Xeon Phi card, and we want to profile and analyze our software using VTune as part of Intel Parallel Studio. Since the server is headless (no Monitor, no X11 support), I would like to analyze the profiling results on my workstation. Is this possible with a single named-user License? I'm the only person working with the Xeon Phi card and the tools. Or otherwise, is there some sort of a free VTune viewer to display profiling results? Unfortunately, there does not seem to be a software-presales team to help me with that question, and the general(?) / hardware presales team directed me to this forum.

Cheers,
Marcus

[TimP]

I believe you could install VTune with Xeon Phi support enabled on a workstation running 64-bit OS, and mount or copy over all the required files so as to run analyzer.  More common, probably, would be to log into the server, e.g. by ssh -Y, or vnc or eclipse, so that the display is assigned to your workstation. If your servers are set up so as to block all of those, it seems an unusually restrictive policy.

[robert-reed · Accepted solution]

Well, if your collection server is truly headless then it probably doesn't have even the X11 libraries needed to support ssh -Y, since that assumes the remote end is sending X11 packets through the connection.  Rather, if you look in the VTune Amplifier release notes, you'll find this section:

Installing Collectors on Remote Systems
You can install the command line data collection features of the product on remote systems to reduce overhead and simply collect data remotely. Data collection on a remote system does not require a license; however, viewing of the data cannot be done on the remote system unless a license is present.

The results of any data collection that is run on the remote system must then be copied to the 
system where the regular install was done for analysis, viewing, and reporting.

To do this:
1.  Copy the CLI_install folder (found at the top level in the extracted product install package) to the remote machine. 
2.  Execute ./install.sh script file (this file is located inside the CLI_install folder). 
No activation will be required.

So you should be able with your single license to install VTune Amplifier (GUI and all) on your fully-functioned local workstation and then remotely install amplxe-cl on the headless node, run the command line tool as collector there and then bring the results back to the workstation for viewing and analysis.  There may be some extra steps needed to ensure the MPSS components needed for finalization under VTune Amplifier are available on the workstation.

[Marcus_E_]

Thanks a lot, Robert! That is exactly what I needed. And yes, there are no X11 libraries installed and thus X-forwarding was not an option.

Cheers,
Marcus

[GAnthony_R_Intel]

I have a similar situation. I've installed the latest version of VTune on a Mac, but need to profile a python script on a remote Linux machine that has no X11 server. Can you point me to where the CLI_folder should be on the Mac? Does the same trick still work?

Thanks.

[GAnthony_R_Intel]

UPDATE: I think I understand this now. Since the one machine is a Mac and the other Linux, then I need to download the Linux installer and run the `install.sh` from the CLI folder in that installation, right? I thought there was something I needed to copy over from the Mac to the Linux machine.

[PAVEL_G_Intel]

Hi, 

Intel VTune Amplifier has remote connection type which works over ssh. I think it's the best solution for you. Please read these topics for system setup:

Linux Targets setup
SSH access setup
Only if you have old Intel VTune Amplifier than instruction for manual target package setup.

What version do you have?

- Pavel