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2017 Nov 29 Research IT Club

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2018 Feb 21 Research IT Club

Simon Hood

its-ri-team@manchester.ac.uk
Head of Research IT Infrastructure and Platforms,
IT Services, University of Manchester

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2017 Nov 29 Research IT Club

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News

Why don't you knock it off with them negative waves? Why don't you dig how beautiful it is out here? Why don't you say something righteous and hopeful for a change?

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2017 Nov 29 Research IT Club

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A Workplace for Identifiable Patient Data

• Very secure storage.
• Data encrypted at rest.
• Audit trail.
• May be suitable for other sensitive data — ask!
• Costing model being worked on.

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2017 Nov 29 Research IT Club

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Campus Network

• Major investment in campus network coming
• ITT is out — do you have input/requirements?

At-Risk Data

• In process of moving at-risk data in FBMH to RDS
  • faculty-funded for two years
• Do you have at-risk data?
• Costing on grants essential — POSF model coming. . .(?)

Interim RDA Platform

• Data Vault (JISC-developed platform)
• In soft launch — would you like to try it?
• Long-term RDA platforms will be decided by RLP (later).

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2017 Nov 29 Research IT Club

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Always-on (aka backbone):

• 64 GB RAM: 16 * 8-core, 12 * 12-core, 4 * 16-core;
• 256 GB RAM: 8 * 16-core.

MS Windows Compute Resource:

256 GB nodes:

• split into Condor VM nodes (KVM)
• Some MS Windows nodes!
  • would you like to try it?

Future:

• Singularity? (Containers. . .)
• Bursting to Azure?

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2017 Nov 29 Research IT Club

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Two into one does go!

• Main two on-site compute platforms: CSF2 and Hydra/DPSF
• Separate mainly for historical reasons

Merger: CSF2 + DPSF = CSF3

• Easier for users;
• support more efficient.
• Work started!

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2017 Nov 29 Research IT Club

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Business case going in. . .

• The RVM Platform is a success!
• But some unfortunate events. . .
• Planned investment to:
  • add second site to massively improve resilience;
  • offer resources for CPU-intensive VMs.

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2017 Nov 29 Research IT Club

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Research IT mirror some data-sets. . .

• UK BioBank Full Release
• Genome Aggregation Dataset (GnomAD)

More:

http://ri.itservices.manchester.ac.uk/hosted-data-sets/

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2017 Nov 29 Research IT Club

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Who

• Out: Liverpool, Newcastle, Sheffield.
• In : Lancaster, Leeds(?), Manchester, York and (hosting only) Durham.

Hybrid Resources

• Principal investment: a cluster hosted at Durham (4000 cores?);
• Dell/Alces, cf. on site CSF
• secondary, resources from AWS/Azure: exploratory paddle!

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2017 Nov 29 Research IT Club

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People

• Not just about compute resources!
• All eight institutions!

Academic Themes

• Several research themes.
• Cross-cutting technology themes.

Research IT Themes

• RSE Theme — RSE lead being sought. . .
• Existing "RIE" group to develop in parallel.
• Work for common good across N8 institutions.

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2017 Nov 29 Research IT Club

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Potential Multi-Million Pound Investement

Streams

• Stream 1: e-infrastructure (includes HPC, HTC and HPDA);
• Stream 2: RDM;
• Stream 3: Research Lifecycle (incl. business/admin platforms).

Consultancy phase

• Happening now — until end of April 2018!
• Very short timescales — grateful for your help.
• Followed by detailed business cases development.
• And very significant investment — we hope!