Siemens PLM on HPC Systems
What is the Siemens PLM Software Package?
The Siemens PLM Software Package is an engineering and scientific software suite applicable for the simulation of computational fluid dynamics (CFD), acoustics, computational structural mechanics (CSM) and many more applications. Currently at LRZ Linux Cluster Systems out of the multitude of different Siemens PLM simulation tools and applications StarCCM+is supported, which can be accessed either through its GUI (Simcenter StarCCM+) or by using its command line interface, e.g. in so-called batch mode on the Linux Cluster and SuperMUC-NG for distributed parallel processing using the SLURM scheduler. Furthermore the Siemens PLM Software Package includes the 3d results visualization tool StarView+.
Software Producer
Siemens Industrie Software GmbH
Franz-Geuer-Str. 10
D-50823 Köln
Germany
Tel.: +49 (0)221 20802-0
Fax: +49 (0)221 248928
The Siemens PLM Applications being Supported at LRZ
Simcenter StarCCM+ (Fluid Dynamics)
Licensing
The Leibniz Supercomputing Center (LRZ) provides access to the Siemens PLM Software which is limited by the number of concurrently available software licenses as well as by the terms and conditions for the usage of the Siemens PLM Licenses. Besides a limited number of available floating licenses (10) for the StarCCM+ software at LRZ, users are free to bring their own POD (Power on Demand) licenses or to refer to license servers which are operated at their own academic institutions. The provided licenses may only be used for research and teaching by the institutes of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and the Munich Universities. The licenses allow only the use of selected Siemens PLM products for non-commercial purposes.
Important Note:
The available licenses (10) at LRZ are a temporary offering, currently limited until 18. February 2024 (but now already prolongated into the 4th consecutive year). It is expected, that the licenses at LRZ will be further prolongated, also there is no obligation from the LRZ side to continue the provisioning of Siemens PLM licenses beyond the given date. The 10 LRZ licenses for the StarCCM+ fluid dynamics software of Siemens PLM are assigned to users from TUM, LMU and HM free of any license fee or charge and on a first-come-first served basis. Interested users are kindly asked to submit a LRZ Service Request.
Furthermore users of the Siemens PLM software are free to access LRZ HPC systems with their own software licenses (either floating or POD licenses) from other license resources, e.g. the TUM Campus license for the Siemens PLM software.
For academic research purposes of students and employees of the TU Munich (TUM) there is a Campus license based on the Power-on-Demand licensing scheme of Siemens PLM available. Users from the TUM are adviced to contact the TUM User Desk for further information. Once a POD license key is obtained, users could make use of this POD license key for parallel computations on LRZ Linux Cluster Systems using the Siemens PLM software.
Important Note:
If you are not a user of a POD license, prior to use the Siemens PLM Software on any LRZ computer system you need to register with LRZ user support in order to obtain an entry of your LRZ user-ID in the Siemens PLM license server operated and managed by LRZ. Only afterwards a user (not using his own POD license) will be aible to checkout a license for the selected and supported Siemens PLM software applications from the LRZ license server. Granted access to LRZ Linux Cluster and/or SuperMUC-NG does not automatically imply a granted access to any licensed software. Access to licensed software is granted on individual request!
For local installation of the software please consult our software download page. To access this site you need a password that you will receive by contacting the LRZ user support. Furthermore, the most contemporary version of the Siemens PLM software (Windows, Linux) can be downloaded directly from the Siemens PLM Software Download Portal for those users who have their own Siemens PLM software license contract.
Actual and Default Version
Since April 2024 the latest release version of the Siemens PLM Software Package is named "2024.2.1", while in accordance to the default installation path the software is named v19.04.007 (v19.04.007-r8 for double precision). Siemens PLM has introduced a new release cycle and naming convention for their software releases (2024.2.1 = 2406.001). From the LRZ side it was agreed, that only the so called maintenance releases will be installed on the LRZ HPC systems. In accordance with the new naming scheme this will be 2402.0001 (April), 2406.0001 (August) and 2410.0001 (December).
This new version of StarCCM+ Version 2024.2.1 has been made available on CM4 (cm4_inter_large_mem) and SNG. The software in the newest version 2024.2.1 is no longer able to run on CoolMUC-2/3. Therefore the default version / software module of the StarcCCM+ software on the LRZ Linux Clusters and on SuperMUC-NG has not been changed and it remains at the version 2023.3.1. At the same time older versions of the Siemens PLM software are still provided as separate modules in the module system for a time frame of approx. 2 calendar years. After this 2 years support period outdated versions of the Siemens PLM software will be deprecated as a LRZ software module.
Getting Started
LRZ users are adviced NOT to use Linux Cluster or SuperMUC-NG login nodes for any kind of Siemens PLM simulations which have the potential to put some heavy processor load on these login node systems or which are potentially consuming large amounts of memory in order not to disturb other cluster users. For such purposes large memory nodes are provided e.g. in interactive cluster queues.
Once you are logged into one of these systems, you can check the availability (i.e. installation) of StarCCM+ software by:
> module avail starccm
Load the prefered StarCCM+ version environment module, e.g.:
> module load starccm/2024.2.1
For parallel execution of the Siemens PLM individual software applications (so far only StarCCM+ is supported at LRZ) in the LRZ Linux Cluster and SuperMUC-NG batch queuing systems (SLURM) please refer to the provided application-specific subpages of this documentation. If the software of your choice is not yet listed as an available software module, please contact the LRZ application support team.
Documentation
The Siemens PLM documentation can be accessed from within StarCCM+ through the provided help menue. Furthermore StarCCM+ documentation is provided for registered users through the Siemens PLM Steve Portal.
On LRZ systems with available StarCCM+ installation the available help on command line options can further be accessed by:
> module load starccm/2024.2.1 > starccm+ -help
SSH User Environment Settings
As described in the LRZ documentation "Using Secure Shell on LRZ HPC Systems → LRZ internal configuration", some applications require special SSH keys for the cluster internal communication. Siemens PLM StarCCM+ belongs to this class of applications, if the command line option --bootstrap=ssh is being used.
Therefore Siemens PLM software users should follow the SSH setup steps as outlined here. This section is only relevant for setting up ssh to work without passwords (and without ssh-agent) inside the cluster. This is needed for e.g. batch process startup in some MPI implementations. None of the keys (public or private) generated here should be transferred outside the cluster, since this may incur security problems. The following commands must therefore be executed on the LRZ target system, i.e. one of the Linux Cluster or SuperMUC-NG login nodes.
| Commands | Remarks |
|---|---|
cd $HOME mkdir ~/.ssh | Make in your $HOME directory a hidden subfolder for the SSH-Keys and configuration files (if not existing yet). |
chmod 700 ~/.ssh | Make this .ssh subfolder accessible only for yourself, not for the project group and not for others. This is a mandatory setting. With different permission settings SSH connections might not work correctly on LRZ Linux Clusters. |
cd ~/.ssh ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -a 100 | Generate an ed25519 key. The command will respond with Generating public/private ed25519 key pair. to which you respond by typing the ENTER key. Next, you are prompted for a passphrase Enter passphrase (empty for no passphrase): to which you should respond by typing ENTER twice (no passphrase). |
cd ~/.ssh cat id_ed25519.pub >> authorized_keys | Add internal public SSH key to the list of authorized keys. |
Mailing List for Siemens PLM Users
Users of the LRZ licenses for Siemens PLM products may join the mailinglist siemens.plm@lists.lrz.de. This list will provide the user with important information about Siemens PLM software installation at LRZ (e.g. announcement of new versions, system configuration changes or important updates).
More information about Siemens PLM mailinglist at LRZ may be found here.
User Support
In case of any observed issues in the usage of the Siemens PLM software on LRZ managed compute resources or any arising questions, please feel free to contact the LRZ support. Please submit your LRZ Service Request with a clear specification of the encountered issue with the Siemens PLM software, e.g. by indicating in the request subject "Siemens PLM / StarCCM+ issue: ....". This will help the LRZ operators to assign your support request to the most appropriate LRZ staff to assist you.