Notes for the ITC-Research Computing Standing Committee Meeting
December 8, 2008 at 10:30 AM
2015 Ivy Road, 1st Floor Conference Room

Members: Alice, Andrew, Hamp, Jim, Joe S., Mark, Mike, Robin, Terry, Tim S., Tom and members of Systems, Research Computing and ACHS as desired

Attending: Alice, Andrew, Hamp, Jim, Joe S., Robin, Tom, Ed Hall, Katherine Holcomb

Chair: Tom
Recorder: Alice

I. Corrections to minutes from last meeting on November 10, 2008? (Click to review the agenda from this meeting)

II. Old Business:

• Update on UVACSE APB and related:
• Andrew plans to use the next APB meeting (01/28/09) to have a discussion about cycles vs. storage – and reach a decision. The timing is fine – ITC might have at most $100K to spend.
• Storage needs assessment -- LSP dialog, survey (Joe)
• Katherine will send an announcement about the Town Hall meeting for HPC users (on 12/11/08) to the LSP list.
• Cluster node purchase by faculty – Hamp’s price quotes; Admin charges for Condo owners:
• The group reviewed an email from Hamp with prices for Dell processor chips – and decided to go with the L series (low power) dual quad core processors – in particular with the L5430 (without the ES option). We will go with 1 disk per node – and if we end up getting 30-40 nodes, these could be added to Elder – with separate queues – and manage it all as a cluster so we would not need to get another head node.
• About admin charges for Condo owners – if they are willing to go with our current policy of 80/20 (i.e. a guarantee of priority access to at least 80% of the cycles of the owner’s nodes), then ITC’s admin services are free – they are also subject to ITC scheduling policies. Andrew would like to try resource-based scheduling.
• So we need to get back to Michael Shirts with the per node cost – (note: his storage needs are a separate purchase item) – Hamp can put out an invitation and get quotes – hopefully by the end of next week.
• Possibility of acquired "gently used" systems:
• No news on acquiring more of these. However the CS department is doing a system reorganization so that they can plug in the 192 cores they already received from JP Morgan – the plan is to add these to the grid. Scott will talk to Hamp/BillP/Katherine about upgrading their MPI to be synchronized with ITC’s. Andrew reported that some Virginia Tech systems will be added to the grid after the first of the year.
• Communication with potential benefactor – no news.
• Update on new machine-room building – still on track for Christmas 2010.

III. New Business:

• Any other Items:
• We need to upgrade PBS and transition to floating licenses by 01/10/09 – plus we do not want to do make this change during the HPC Bootcamp (1//5-1/9/09). Will need to give users notice – and drain the queue prior to the upgrade.
• There was some discussion about ITC’s thinking about the future of the public labs – including efforts to virtualize the lab software. It is unclear whether faculty and students are aware of ITC’s current planning/thinking – and whether or not their feedback and concerns have been solicited and addressed.

IV. Adjourn by 11:45 and next meeting

• Next Scheduled Meeting of ITC ResComp Standing Committee: January 12, 2009 in ITC-2015 Ivy Road, Room #102 (First Floor Conference Room)
  Please send suggestions, additions, corrections to: Tom or Alice