Agenda for the ITC-Research Computing Management Meeting
April 30, 2007 at 10:30AM
2015 Ivy Road, 1st Floor Conference Room

 

Members: Alice, Hamp, Jim, Joe S., Mark, Mike, Robin, Terry, Tim S., Tom, Tim T.
Chair: Tim T.
Recorder: Alice Howard

I. Connection Question: What do you think is the best (favorite) or worst thing about U.Va. research computing?

II. Corrections to minutes from last meeting on March 26, 2007?

III. Old Business:

• Proposed research computing hardware expenditures. Decided at March meeting to:
  • Buy ~8 Xeon 5160 (80w) 3.0 GHz, 4MB cache, 32GB (8 x 4 DIMMS) 160 GB HD (mirrored) nodes for new cluster to replace Athena. Have operational in mid-summer.
  • Hamp will send out cost estimates of adding infiniband to some nodes of dogwood.
  • Retire birch by August 1, if not sooner. Not buy new nodes to make "new birch" cluster. Likely not offer infiniband (or other high speed interconnect) replacement.
• (from prior meetings: (Tom) Genomics might want to buy in to cluster – but infiniband type cluster not appropriate for them. They need large memory computers.
  
• Jim & Hamp will come up with rate for buying "priority" time on dogwood cluster.
• Tim/RCS staff will do review of other institutions queuing and cluster purchase programs in preperation for public forum on queuing policies. Time frame?


• Linux Clusters: Birch, Cedar, Dogwood - any issues, concerns or upcoming updates/changes?
  • Cluster upgrades this summer, depending on when next version of ROCKS released (RHEL 5 out).
• Any update on conversion to authenticate to Eservices via Kerberos for Unix logins/connections for Blue.unix? (AKA Phase 2 of Netbadge CDP and "unified password" web site).
• Project Implicit, PI: Brian Nosek, Psychology Department. Project description at: NIH-IPP.researchplan.B-Nosek.pdf
  • Tim, Hamp, Andrew Sallans & Carla Lee from Brown SEL meeting with Brian & his group this week.

IV. New Business:

• VT-UVa IT Collaboration. Meeting on April 2nd. Collab site: "UVa VT IT Collab" One part is around HPC and Computational Science. Going forward with UVa-VT Computational Science bootcamp this summer, Andrew Grimshaw spearheading.
• Any news, information from E-School? SURA? Other organizations?
• At future meeting this summer, when all are present: In light of our familiarity with collaborative model of communities, consider for next meeting, re-examining our purpose, our membership and our constiuency.
  • what are we about/doing?
  • who are we as group?
  • Do we have the right group of folks?
  • Are we organized/operating effectively/efficently?
• Any other Items?

V. Adjourn by 12:00 and next meeting

• Next Scheduled Meeting of ITC ResComp Standing Committee: Monday, May 21st, 10:30 AM in ITC-2015 Ivy Road, Room #102 (First Floor Conference Room)!
  
  Please send suggestions, additions, corrections to: Tim Tolson or Alice Howard
  

Go to: ITC Research Computing Committee Home Page