RI Update March 2017
Research Data Storage:
The Research Data Storage platform is being refreshed after a hugely successful
five years. The new platform will comprise: Isilon as fast, Tier 1 storage,
as now; EMC ECS as slower, but much cheaper, Tier 2 storage. Files which have
not been accessed in some time will automatically be moved from Tier 1 to Tier2;
this will be completely invisible to users of the storage.
The new Isilon nodes will be faster than the existing ones and the overall
cost, per unit of storage, will be much lower: over and above the uncharged
8 TB, the new charge will be 120 pounds per TB per year, replicated (down from
272 pounds).
Computational Resource
For several years now the Computational Shared Facility, The University’s
flagship computational (aka “HPC”) platform has been open to research groups
which contribute funds, only. Free computational resource from Research IT
comprised the ageing Redqueen and The Condor Pool, only.
Happily things are changing! A PO for 150k worth of compute nodes for The CSF
went to Dell on Monday 27th Feb. Hence, in six or eight weeks, we will be
able to offer University researchers around 500 cores to share, uncharged.
Research Infrastructure Time and Expertise Available
Within Research IT the Research Infrastructure team has a wealth of experience
in building and supporting computational platforms, storage, VMs, Web servers
and all sorts of custom, local infrastructure for research groups.
We are planning to expand the team in order to provide research groups with
dedicated support from individuals for one or more days a week for the
corresponding price of 0.2 FTE, or more.
If this is something you and your research group would be interested in then
please get in touch with your ideas and feedback — and perhaps money!