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OpenShift and Merlin on Power

  • 1.  OpenShift and Merlin on Power

    Posted Wed September 21, 2022 12:25 PM

    Who's doing Merlin on Power?

    How's your OpenShift experience in that environment?



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    Jack Woehr
    IBM Champion 2021 -2022
    IBM Qiskit Advocate
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  • 2.  RE: OpenShift and Merlin on Power

    Posted Wed September 21, 2022 12:36 PM
    Hi, Jack!

    Are you referring to Merlin as it relates to nVidia, eg:  https://github.com/NVIDIA-Merlin/Merlin?  If so, the answer may seem a little disappointing, although I'm not specifically familiar with Merlin and hadn't seen any prior requests.  However, with the newer Power10 launch, the Power brand chose to move away from a training focus for AI and ML which was focused on GPUs and instead to a more enterprise focused AI model which makes use of the Power10 intrinsics around mma and related accelerations to do more AI and ML processing rather than training/learning.  As I understand it, the rate of scaling GPUs to the rate of scale of Power10 made GPUs more cumbersome and inefficient to make use of, hence the focus on enterprise AI and the elimination of work around embedded GPUs and nVidia solutions in general.

    Are there other workloads that Merlin is suited for that do not relate to GPUs or if there is any way my answer is incomplete let me know, but thanks for the (hard! ;-) question!

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    Gerrit
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    Original Message


  • 3.  RE: OpenShift and Merlin on Power

    Posted Wed September 21, 2022 12:53 PM
    @Gerrit Huizenga I was referring to the new IBM i Merlin offering which runs in OpenShift on Power or x86.
    ​

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    Jack Woehr
    IBM Champion 2021 -2022
    IBM Qiskit Advocate
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    Original Message


  • 4.  RE: OpenShift and Merlin on Power

    Posted Wed September 21, 2022 12:55 PM
    AHA!  I don't know if you remember in my presentation but one thing I mentioned is that figuring out what packages/offerings we are talking about when porting and such is one of the first challenges!  ;)  So, I'm not familiar with the IBM i offerings but we'll get someone to take a look.  They most likely also have their own community somewhere but let's see if we can find someone who can give you a solid answer there!

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    Gerrit
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    Original Message


  • 5.  RE: OpenShift and Merlin on Power

    Posted Wed September 21, 2022 01:27 PM
    Thanks, Gerrit ... My question was really "user experience". I wondered if there was anyone in the community already installing and/or using Merlin and how their interactions with OpenShift on the Power platform were going. I'll be presenting on IBM i Merlin at COMMON NAViGATE in a couple of weeks and was curious what people are experiencing.

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    Jack Woehr
    IBM Champion 2021 -2022
    IBM Qiskit Advocate
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    Original Message


  • 6.  RE: OpenShift and Merlin on Power

    Posted Wed September 21, 2022 07:06 PM
    Hey Jack,  Linda mentioned that internally, Steve Will is a good person to ask about Merlin.  We are going to see if we can get him to peek in here and give you a response or any other pointers.

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    Gerrit
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    Original Message


  • 7.  RE: OpenShift and Merlin on Power

    Posted Thu September 22, 2022 12:03 AM
    Thanks, Gerrit, IBM i CTO Steve Will and I are acquainted and do communicate from time to time.
    I'm doing a presentation and was looking for user experience.

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    Jack Woehr
    IBM Champion 2021 -2022
    IBM Qiskit Advocate
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    Original Message


  • 8.  RE: OpenShift and Merlin on Power

    Posted Thu September 22, 2022 11:03 AM
    Jack,
    Tim Rowe, is one of the leaders on Merlin, you can reach out to him to see what he has been hearing. timmr@us.ibm.com

    Bruce

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    Bruce Anthony
    Distinguished Engineer and CTO OpenShift and Hybrid Cloud for IBM Power
    IBM
    Pine River MN
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    Original Message


  • 9.  RE: OpenShift and Merlin on Power

    Posted Mon September 26, 2022 06:21 PM
    @Liam Allan May also be able to help with IBM i Merlin​.

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    Michael Neuling
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    Original Message


  • 10.  RE: OpenShift and Merlin on Power

    Posted Mon September 26, 2022 07:36 PM
    Thanks, @Michael Neuling, @Liam Allan indeed can help and has been helping :)

    ​​​Again, I was sorta looking for user experience if there's any out there within the sound of my keyboard here in IBM Community!

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    Jack Woehr
    IBM Champion 2021 -2022
    IBM Qiskit Advocate
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    Original Message


  • 11.  RE: OpenShift and Merlin on Power

    Posted Fri October 07, 2022 02:53 PM

    Definitely not an IBM i person.... 31 years on AIX and Power, just recently dipping my little toe into IBM i thanks to Power Virtual Server.

    I have a lab OpenShift V4.11 cluster running on Power8 servers.
    Got MERLIN installed and as far as I can tell, the pods are all running.  But (and it's likely something I missed in the instructions), the web link connects but it's just a blank page.  Honestly I've not had the cycles to debug since I installed it 3 weeks ago.  Hopefully soon!  Probably NOT the kind of feedback you were hoping for, but as a techie, I gotta be honest.



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    Glen Corneau
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    Original Message


  • 12.  RE: OpenShift and Merlin on Power

    Posted Sun October 09, 2022 09:56 AM
    Hi @Glen Corneau

    If you do start debugging Merlin and want to share this wonderful experience :) via Zoom and look at it together, please let me know.
    ​

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    Jack Woehr
    IBM Champion 2021 -2022
    IBM Qiskit Advocate
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    Original Message


  • 13.  RE: OpenShift and Merlin on Power

    Posted Mon October 10, 2022 04:04 PM
    Hi Glen,

    Getting a blank page usually means the browser certificates are not installed so you can't get a secure connection going.

    https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/ibm-i-modernization-engine-lifecycle-integration-merlin-overview has links to Getting Started YouTube videos for users which includes the browser setup.

    Eric Simpson

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    Eric Simpson
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    Original Message


  • 14.  RE: OpenShift and Merlin on Power

    Posted Sat October 15, 2022 02:58 PM
    Greetings to help with Merlin setup and usage we have recently posted a new step by step documentation page. https://ibm.github.io/merlin-docs/#/ Would recommend taking a peek and following the step by step instructions. 

    Tim

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    Tim Rowe
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    Original Message