Overview

What is the zCSF?

The zCSF — aka Zrek — is a loose-knit computational cluster used to bring together servers procured by research groups at The University which host emerging technology. Over the last few years this has included Intel’s Xeon Phi cards, FPGAs and computational GPUs (e.g., those from Nvidia).

The cluster provides a managed environment for these nodes moving the system administration overhead from research groups to IT Services; making it easier to share and exploit the technology; and ensuring that users of each node can benefit from Zrek being part of the UoM CIR Ecosystem (see below).

For more information please contact its-ri-team@manchester.ac.uk

Contributing to Zrek

If you are interested in contributing to Zrek, please email us at the above address.

Accessing Zrek

If you have contributed to Zrek and people from your group require access, please email us at the above address. If you have not contributed to Zrek, but are nevertheless interested in accessing the nodes, please email us and we will try to arrange an evaluation period for you.

Part of the UoM CIR Ecosystem

Zrek is part of the University of Manchester Computationally Intensive Research Ecosystem. As such:

• All hosts access Ecosystem filesystems and have access to the RDS: users have a common home-directory (e.g., see the same files when logged into the CSF or iCSF); research groups’ shared areas are also available.
• All hosts within Zrek are professionally managed, hosted and supported.

The Ecosystem is intended to address all computational and data storage requirements of UoM computational researchers: batch computation; interactive computation; secure, resilient data storage; fast, dedicated and secure network; and virtual machines.