Notes for the ITC-Research Computing Standing Committee Meeting
September 14, 2009 at 10:45 AM
ITC-Dynamics 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, Hamp, Jim, Joe S., Mark, Robin, Tom, Katherine Holcomb, Ed Hall


Chair: Tom
Recorder: Alice

 

I. Corrections to minutes from last meeting on July 13, 2009? (Click to review the agenda from this meeting)

 

II. Old Business:

¤    Katherine sent out a draft announcement/letter in June and did not receive any comments back.

¤    Decided to make this change for new users at noon today (09/14/09) – and will document the change and give instructions to existing account holders about how to change to bash.

¤    No news.

¤    Done and license keys updated.

¤    We might now have some user demand/need for additional memory for Dogwood – Katherine will check with Andrew about needs for specific amounts of memory – and Hamp will get some updated pricing.

¤    We will hold off on this discussion until Andrew can be present.

¤    Avik Ghosh is buying 10 nodes – Cameron Mura has a request for funding – Hamp will get back with Leonard Scott.

¤    Actually it is more work to take it out than to just leave it – but we will not advertise that we have it.

¤    We are using glustre now and it is doing great.

¤    Katherine has moved and updated the cluster-related documentation to UVACSE – and made a start on updating the HSM documentation – Ed will be working on the Matlab/etc documentation – could tell ScottC to redirect to what is already up and updated.

¤    The new mid-tier storage rates have been approved and discussed at DTC and LSP meetings – also have new Enterprise storage rates (that include snapshots) – and there is a draft website that will document the functionality and differences between the various levels of storage options for users.

¤    Skip this topic for today.

¤    This topic skipped too.

 

III. New Business:

¤    Use of our grid resources is growing –and demand is increasing (e.g. two faculty - Physics, Biostatistics - need a LOT of cpu time) – Andrew is looking for more linux boxes (clusters or single machines) that can be added to our grid.  Katherine will be a test case for adding staff workstations to the grid.

¤    Jim mentioned there are SURAgrid resources (http://www.sura.org/programs/sura_grid.html) that could be available for our researchers – and they could start first using our own SURAgrid 19 node cluster.  Andrew will talk to Hamp.

¤    Hardly anyone is using 32-bit – so this does not seem worth doing.  We should announce that we are not patching/upgrading 32-bit applications – but first pass this idea by Tracy and the Service Transition group.

¤    A dead issue.

¤    Mark wants to convene a group to work this out – who should be included from ITC, Libraries, UVACSE, and SHANTI?    Start with Mark, Tom, Katherine (UVACSE), Nancy K (ScholarsÕ Lab), Kathy G (RCL), Andrew Sallans (Brown Library), Joe Gilbert (Alderman), and John A or Yuji (SHANTI).

 

 

IV. Adjourn by 11:45 and next meeting