Minutes for the ITC-Research Computing Management
Meeting
December 18, 2006 at 10:30AM
2015 Ivy Road, 2nd Floor Conference Room
Members: Alice, Hamp, Jim, Joe S.,
Mark, Mike, Robin, Terry, Tim S., Tom S., Tim T.
Attending: Alice, Hamp, Jim, Joe S., Mark, Terry,
Tim S., Tom S., Tim T.
Chair: Tim T. Recorder: Alice Howard
I. Corrections to minutes
from last meeting on December 14, 2006?
II. Old Business:
- Proposal
for allocating $150K hardware funds
- Agreed
to NOT renew Birch maintenance contract for another year, rather may have
to let nodes die as equipment fails if parts not available (e.g., can't
find these older myrinet card anywhere), expect at most 2 or 3 nodes to
have such failures.
- 24 (to
36) infiniband cluster (for fine-grained parallel) to replace birch
(costing ~$100K),
- PLUS 1 or 2 very large memory
computers (not clusters) - 4Way CPU with 32 GB memory, with Linux OS to
replace "athena". Requires 64-bit kernel.
- Two
Proposals for "buy-in" to the cluster, both new one and existing
dogwood. One gives priority to running jobs anytime you want by dedicating
X purchased nodes to exclusive use of the researcher. The other gives
priority queue access to the entire cluster. Draft proposal of these two
is detailed at: http://holmes.itc.virginia.edu/ResNotes/cluster-purchase.html
- Any
update on conversion to authenticate to Eservices via Kerberos for Unix
logins/connections to blue.unix, HSM & Longtmp? (AKA Phase 2 of
Netbadge CDP).
- This
transition will involve a major user education issue – especially for
blue.unix users.
- No
timeline for this project yet – it has to wait until after the password
synchronization web site is up.
- ftp
to blue.unix is being phased out, ITC-Service Transitions CDP working on
schedule.
- Infrastructure
Supporting Research Task Force (https://www1.seas.virginia.edu/itrtf/).
(Maillist is itrtf@virginia.edu)
- CI-TEAM
NSF proposal funded. Course has a time (MWF, 9-10) and course number
(CS494 Computational Mathematics), fully enrolled (40+ undergrads, mostly
3rd & 4th year, mix of E-School disciplines, not all CS.
- UVa's
participation in ORNL's response to NSF RFP for next generation/iteration
of Supercomputing Center . The full proposal is due on 2/2/07.
- Update
on longtmp and HSM upgrades? (HSM scheduled for next spring07 semester)
- Longtmp switched to NetApp - more disk space now. Snapshot frequency should be?
- Will
change to use Eservices password soon – but this effects few users.
- SURA survey request- TimT. will contact Phil about pulling together group, possibly by email.
- Need
to find researchers to use the SURA grid.
- At Dec
14 meeting, agreed that TimT. would contact Elec.Engineering about droppping
the 8 Ultra60s in E225 and ITC no longer having a presence in E225 after
Spring 2007 semester. We are willing to transfer the Ultra60s to Elec
Engineering if they want them. Will put a one or two each of Linux, Sun
and Macintosh workstations in ResComp Lab in Clark.
- EnvSci request to get nodes from Aspen cluster. Agreed 12/14/06 to have TimT. meet with the EnvSci faculty coordinator of the LSP-making-request to see if there are other ways we can meet the needs generating this request.
- But -- we could give them the Aspen nodes AFTER they fall off the ETF list.
III. New Business:
· Draft of Linux Node Purchase Information and Request to Participate –
o Reviewed the draft text and set a deadline of January 22, 2007
·
What about adding the Pay-As-You-Go option or on-demand
option – where a researcher could pay for access with some minimums in place
(e.g. 8 nodes for a month)? Probably only realistic to have this option
on dogwood – will need to figure/estimate a rate and get it approved –and will
include this option in condo cluster ad.
- Any other Items?
IV. Adjourn by 12:00 and next
meeting
- Next
Scheduled Meeting of ITC ResComp Standing Committee: Monday, January 29th,
10:30 AM in ITC-2015 Ivy Road, Room #220.
Please send suggestions, additions, corrections to: Tim Tolson or Alice Howard
