Dr Arthur TrewEPCC Director

A.S.Trew@ed.ac.uk+44 131 650 5025

A Research Computing Infrastructure for Edinburgh

who are we building this for?

• local researchers, eg.– Computational: UoE HPC service, BlueGene/L, BlueDwarf …– Data: ScotGrid, QCDGrid, eDIKT, …

• national research consortia– Computational: QCDOC, HPCx, DEISA– Data: NDCC

• visitors– Computational: HPC-Europa visitor programme– Data: eSI

• … new projects/bids– HECToR, Brain Imaging, systems biology …– next generation machine design …

what’s the problem?

• we thought it was networking and CPU

• … but, a survey of users added data … BIG TIME!

• ... and this projection only included projects with secured

funding

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in summary

• while individual needs varied all required some mixture of– more CPU/memory– more data storage– faster access

• researchers were used to buying their own CPU servers

• so, our strategy was to complement this by providing a

support infrastructure

• Stage 1: we used £1.68 M of SRIF1 to:– create a fast, research network in parallel with edlan– install a research data storage facility

SRIF KB

SRIF AT

The last mile: SRIF1

JANET BAR

Royal Edinburgh Hospital

Library

Appleton Tower

Kings Buildings

Holyrood

Robson Building

EaStMan Router

Old CollegeWestern

General

Pollock Halls

New College

RESNET

Sick Children’sHospital

Medical School

Little France

BUSH

2Mbit/s

100Mbit/s

1000Mbit/s

… and data too

• 155 TB SAN + 36 TB tape backup– available to all e-science researchers

• total investment SRIF1 + project funds: £2.2M

short of space

• … but all the new facilities could not be fitted in the JCMB

machine room

• £4.2M from SRIF2 to refurbish a new research computing

facility

SRIF KB

SRIF AT

SRIF KB

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ACF

10 Gb/s

10 Gb/s

The last mile … Phase 2

JANET BAR

Royal Edinburgh Hospital

Library

Appleton Tower

Kings Buildings

Holyrood

Robson Building

EaStMan Router

Old CollegeWestern

General

Pollock Halls

New College

RESNET

Sick Children’sHospital

Medical School

Little France

BUSH

2Mbit/s

100Mbit/s

1000Mbit/s

the research SAN

KB

AT

SRIF/SJ4

Fibrechannel10 Gb/s

HPCx

iSCSI

NAS

QCDOC BG/L

SAN

what facilities are available to me?

• CPU– UoE HPC service (lomond) – 52-pe Sun E15000– BlueGene/L (bluesky) – 2,000-pe IBM R&D machine

– capability computing for the initiated

• data– research SAN – 155TB (disk), 36TB (tape) Sun 6290

• networking– SRIF network

• secure machine room space

• … email me with your needs and we’ll see what we can do

• other facilities by arrangement with project owners– BlueDwarf, ScotGrid,

a free lunch?

• the ACF is a strategic University facility– and hence open to all researchers

• although a real capital asset, the recurrent support for– facilities management– maintenance, power, space charges …– and, perhaps, user support and applications porting/tuning

• … has to come from project funds

• what is it you want/need?