Computing Hardware / Iceberg Discussion

[c.kuepper]

As mentioned yesterday, NBAF will buy some computing hardware hopefully to be integrated into the Iceberg cluster.

We look to add significant storage (40-100 TB) and a few (hopefully at least 48) fast nodes with 512 GB RAM and further 48 nodes with 256 GB. Exact details will depend on the quote I will get from the computing supplier. This upgrade should facilitate particularly assembly.

There will be a meeting with the CICS people next Tuesday to discuss whether and how we can integrate the servers into Iceberg.

At the moment I have the following things to discuss with them on my list:

-priority ques for the new servers for members of the MolEcol Lab
-no time limits for jobs to be run on 'our' nodes
-no storage limitation as opposed to the 3 months limit on fastdata
-more flexible installation of software
-backup solutions

If you have anything else that I should bring up at this meeting please let me know.

Clemens

[c.kuepper]

An short update from the CICS meeting and after some quotes from Dell:

We try to take the best of both worlds. At the moment we have the following proposal

We'll buy a large computing unit with 48-64 AMD Processors each with 512 GB RAM. This machine can then be multithreaded with Patrick's machine which has 48 AMD Processors with 256 GB RAM.

CICS will also upgrade some of their Intel processors to 64 or 128 GB RAM (currently the maximum is 48 GB RAM). These are substantially fast then the AMD Processors. How many needs first some quotes.

We will get a priority queue for our machine and some Intel cores, so that waiting times are hopefully kept low.

We will buy storage (around 50 TB) from CICS for five years. This is similar to the 80 TB fastdata folder what they have but there will be no time limit on this (fast data has 3 months).

The good thing is that CICS will be doing the maintenance of storage and computing unit.

We'll have another meeting next week. The plan is then to buy the computing unit by the end of February although it will be only fully running after Easter.