Title: ITC Research Computing Support Overview of ITC hardware, software, and services for researchers'
1ITC Research Computing SupportOverview of ITC
hardware, software, and services for researchers.
- By Tim Tolson
- Research Computing Support Center
- Phone 243-8800 F Fax 243-8765
-
- E-Mail Res-Consult_at_Virginia.EDU
- http//www.itc.Virginia.edu/researchers
2ITC Research Computing Support
- This talk is designed to give you an introduction
into the range of hardware, software, and support
services available from ITC to enable and enhance
your research endeavors. - This talk and all previous talks are available
on-line at - http//www.itc.virginia.edu/research/talks
3ITC Computing Support
- ITCWeb web resource for help, information, etc.
at www.itc.virginia.edu - Researchers Portal specific to needs of
researchers, see www.itc.virginia.edu/researchers
- Specific services, software, etc. listed under
this portal at www.itc.virginia.edu/researchers/se
rvices.html - Instructional Technology Group (www.itc.virginia.e
du/instructors) - Includes Digital Media Lab provides equipment and
support for digitizing and editing images, sound,
and video. Offices in Clemons Library.
4ITC Computing Support continued
- Software Central (www.itc.virginia.edu/central)
- provides web download area for software available
to U.Va. faculty, staff, and students such as
SecureCRT, Netscape, Norton AntiVirus, WinZip - ITC Training (www.itc.virginia.edu/training)
- Computer workshops and training ranging from 2
hour courses to multiple week courses and from
Introduction to Word to Perl classes. Many
available for free, others for small fee. - DCI Program (www.itc.virginia.edu/dci)
- Program for purchasing PC and Mac computers that
standardizes software builds, available models,
etc. Voluntary program. Also available for
personal purchases of Dell or Apple computers. - Dial-in Access (being cut-back due to budget
constraints) - Proxy server access available http//www.itc.virg
inia.edu/desktop/proxy/ - http//www.itc.virginia.edu/pubs/announcements/ite
ms/itc-modem.html - http//www.itc.virginia.edu/netsys/dialin_ethernet
_services/home.html
5ITC Computing Support continued
- Software Availability (www.itc.virginia.edu/licens
es) - provides list of all software generally available
about which ITC knows both that licensed by ITC
and by other departments. - Provides links and information about U.Va.'s
Microsoft Select contract, which provides all
Microsoft software at greatly reduced prices.
From Word to C compilers and Windows XP. - http//www.itc.virginia.edu/licenses/selectmain.ht
m - Provides information and tips about how to get
good deals on software purchases. - http//www.itc.virginia.edu/licenses/savvyshop.htm
l
6ITC Academic Computing Health Sciences
(ACHS)(www.med.virginia.edu/achs)
- Tom Spraggins, Manager
- technical consulting for the applications and
hardware supported by ITC-ACHS to specialized
consulting in areas such as molecular biology,
health informatics, and data visualization. - public computing laboratories for medical
research and a teaching lab facility. - located on the third floor of Hospital West (also
known as the Multistory Building), around the
corner from the elevators - Website provides links to grant submission
templates - Open 830 AM to 500 PM. Telephone 982-4025
or e-mail itc-achs_at_virginia.edu.
7Other Research Support
- Office of the Vice President for Research and
Public Service - Office of Sponsored Programs conducts an annual
seminar in September focusing on key components
of doing research at U.Va. Details at
www.virginia.edu/sponpgm or call Ms. Carole
Wagonhurst at 924-6346 - List of Research Services at www.virginia.edu/res
earchandpublicservice/research/research.htm - Alderman Library (www.lib.virginia.edu)
- Electronic Centers (www.lib.virginia.edu/ecenters.
html) - Geospatial and Statistical Data Center (GeoStat)
on 3rd floor of Alderman, 982-2630,
(fisher.lib.virginia.edu)
8Research Computing Support
- Researchers Portal specific to needs of
researchers, see www.itc.virginia.edu/researchers
- Specific services, software, etc. listed under
this portal at www.itc.virginia.edu/researchers/se
rvices.html - Research Computing Support Center (RCSC)
- 244 Wilson Hall - Phone 243-8800, Fax
243-8769 - Hours 900 to 500 PM Monday through Friday,
walk-in - 4 full-time staff 3 with Ph.D., 4 student
consultants - E-mail support/consulting at Res-Consult_at_Virginia.
EDU - Software distribution for ITC site licensed
packages. - https//www.web.virginia.edu/rescomp/ldb/swdb.asp
9Research Computing Resources Available to U.Va.
Researchers
- blue.unix
- Unixlab Cluster
- IBM SP2
- Centurion
- NPACI/NSCA Resources
- Storage
10Learning Unix
- ITC Web Pages on Unix
- www.itc.virginia.edu/desktop/unix/docs/home.html
- Books On Unix
- Learning the Unix Operating System by Jerry Peek
et al. - Unix Power Tools by Jerry Peek et al.
- manpages
11Unix Classes
- ITC Training Courses
- http//www.itc.virginia.edu/training/student/progr
amming.htm - Linux/Unix Workshop - 44 class hours over 11
days, cost 225 - http//www.itc.virginia.edu/training/courses/spec-
linux-unix.intro.html
12Connecting to the Unix machines
- Secure Shell ssh, slogin, scp
www.itc.virginia.edu/desktop/security/ssh.html - Secure CRT (free restricted to U.Va.)
- www.itc.virginia.edu/desktop/securecrt
- Secure FTP (free restricted to U.Va.)
- www.itc.virginia.edu/desktop/securefx
- Exceed (U.Va. site license - costs 35 per
installation) - www.itc.virginia.edu/desktop/unix/docs/exceed.
html - Exceed 3D (Not site licensed, individual per copy
cost) - Contact Tony Townsend at tony_at_virginia.edu
13blue.unix
- www.itc.virginia.edu/desktop/unix/cluster/hom
e.html - Cluster of sixteen IBM RS/6000 machines running
AIX 4.3 - General purpose Unix facility
- CPU limit of one hour for jobs
- Limited memory
14UnixLab Sun SGI Workstations
- Unixlab CPU usage page
- www.people.virginia.edu/userv/usage.html
- No time limits
- Memory limit of 1GB physical limit on the
machines - Can be used for MPI parallel jobs
- UnixLabs in 102 Small Hall and E225 Thornton
include Black White laser printer and Tektronix
color printer - http//www.itc.virginia.edu/research/unixlabhw.htm
l
15Unixlab Cluster SGI Workstations
- SGI workstations in 102 Small Hall
- 7 SGI O2 workstations with 195Mhz R10000 CPUs and
128MB - 3 SGI O2 workstations with 300Mhz R12000 CPUs and
256MB - 3 SGI O200 servers with dual 180Mhz R10000 CPUs
and 1GB
16Sun Workstations
- Sun Ultra workstations in 102 Small Hall and E225
Thornton Hall - 15 Sun Ultra 60s with 450Mhz Ultra II CPUs and
512MB - 12 Sun Ultra 10s with 440Mhz Ultra IIi CPUs and
512MB - 6 Sun Ultra 10s with 333Mhz Ultra IIi CPUs and
512MB - 6 Sun Netras with 500Mhz Ultra IIe CPUs and 1GB
17Vendor Websites for Workstations
- Sun
- www.sun.com/desktop/products/Ultra10/
- www.sun.com/desktop/products/Ultra60/
- www.sun.com/products-n-solutions/hw/networking/net
rat/t200/index.html - SGI
- www.sgi.com/o2/
- www.sgi.com/origin/200/
18IBM SP2
- www.itc.virginia.edu/research/sp2.html
- Cluster of 24 nodes with high speed interconnect
for parallel processing - 20 nodes with 160Mhz Power2SC CPUs with 512MB
- 4 nodes with 120Mhz Power2SC CPUs
- 2 nodes have 1GB of memory
19IBM SP2 (continued)
- Batch Queue System called Loadleveller
- Logins through splogin.sp2
- Users can have two jobs running at the same time
- Maximum of eight CPUs for parallel jobs
- Maximum time limit of 200 hours
20Centurion
- http//legion.virginia.edu/centurion/Centurion.htm
l - Project has lost most of its funding, not all
resources available any more. - Large Linux cluster run by Computer Science
department for the Legion Project. - 128 nodes with dual Pentium 400Mhz CPUs and 256MB
per node. - 128 nodes with 533Mhz Alpha 21164 CPUs and 128MB
per node. - 64 of the Alpha nodes use a High Speed Myrinet
inter-connect. - Jobs submitted through Legion or PBS batch system.
21National SuperComputer Centers
- NPACI - National Partnership for Advanced
Computational Infrastructure. - NCSA - National Center for Supercomputing
Applications - US researchers are eligible to apply for time on
NCSA/NPACI machines. - If application is successful time is free.
- Small allocations for 10,000 hours are relatively
easy to get.
22- BlueHorizon 1152 IBM Power3 CPUs configured in
144 nodes with 8 CPUs and 4GB per nodes based at
San Diego. - http//www.npaci.edu/BlueHorizon/
- TeraScale Computing System 2728 1GHz Alpha CPUs
configured in 682 nodes - http//www.psc.edu/machines/tcs/
- Distributed Terascale Facility a 13.6 Teraflop
Linux Cluster - http//www.npaci.edu/teragrid/index.html
23- NPACI
- http//www.npaci.edu/
- NCSA
- http//www.ncsa.edu/
- NERSC National Energy Research Scientific
Computing Center - (DoE funded research only) - http//www.nersc.gov/
24Storage Facilities at U.Va.
- Home Directory Service
- /tmp and /bigtmp
- /longtmp
- HSM
- Other ITC supported Storage Options
25Home Directory Service
- http//www.itc.virginia.edu/unixsys/homedir
- Graduate students get 100Mb by default, faculty
125 MB quotas may be increased on request by
e-mailing accounts_at_virginia.edu - Backed-up multiple times per day using Snapshot
facility - http//www.itc.virginia.edu/unixsys/homedir/snapsh
ot.html - Default file-system on blue.unix, Unixlab and SP2
system - The home directory service can be mapped to your
PC or Mac so you can access your files directly
from your office or from home! - http//www.itc.virginia.edu/unixsys/homedir/hdlo
gin95.html - http//www.itc.virignia.edu/unixsys/homdir/hdlog
inmac.html
26/tmp and /bigtmp
- http//www.itc.virginia.edu/research/filestora
ge - Used for short time data storage time limit of
24 hours for files before they are deleted. - Can be accessed from blue.unix, SP2 and Unixlab.
- No quota but /bigtmp but the disk is only 2GB.
27/longtmp
- http//www.itc.virginia.edu/research/filestorage.h
tml - Two week limit on files in longtmp although in
general users get longer. - longtmp has a total space of 14GB.
- Users request their required space by sending an
e-mail to res-consult. - longtmp can be accessed from blue.unix, Unixlab
and SP2. - longtmp can also be mapped to your PC.
- http//www.itc.virginia.edu/research/hsm.htmlmaps
28HSM-Hierarchical Storage Management System
- Large Tape system with a hard disk cache
- To use a file from the tape system it is
necessary to insure that the file is moved to the
disk cache - cat file gt /dev/null
29HSM
- http//www.itc.virginia.edu/research/hsm.html
- Large Tape library multiple Terabytes of space.
- Should be used to archive files that are not used
regularly. - Although it is a tape-system, files are accessed
in exactly the same way as any other disk based
file-system . - HSM can be mapped to your PC for direct access.
- http//www.itc.virginia.edu/research/hsm.htmlmaps
- Multiple copies of files are kept for data
integrity.
30HSM-Requesting Space
- Request space by e-mailing
- res-consult_at_virginia.edu
- Post-grads usually have their space allocated
within their supervisors directory space. - Initial allocations are for 5GB with up to 20GB
or more upon on request.
31Other ITC supported Storage Options
- Departmental file-systems can be exported to ITC
machines users can then access their
directories on their departmental machines
directly from ITC computers. - ACHS can provide up to 8 GB of temporary data
storage (2 weeks). - ITC Unix Systems
- http//www.itc.virginia.edu/unixsys
- Departments can also buy additional disk wedges
the cost is 63 for a 250MB wedge per year.
http//www.itc.virginia.edu/unixsys/storage.htmli
ndwedge
32Research Computing Support Group
- Guide you to the appropriate resources to run a
long running or memory intensive program - Recommend software for computer simulations of
dynamical systems - Provide computer workshops on supported software
packages - Assist you in using latex to write a journal or
conference submission
33Research Computing Support Group
- Help you to replicate a statistical analysis
described in a journal article - We distribute over 20 statistical, mathematical,
scientific visualization and other academic
software packages for use at U.Va. (most are
available for free). - https//www.web.virginia.edu/rescomp/ldb/swdb.asp
- And much, much more please contact us, if we
can't help we'll try to find someone who can. - Phone 243-8800 or E-Mail Res-Consult_at_Virginia.ED
U
34Summary
- We provide broad range of computing support and
services. We are here to help you get your
research done. - Next talk is Wednesday, February 20 at Noon here
on The Matlab C/C Compiler Suite 2.1 - This talk will provide an overview of the Matlab
C/C Compiler Suite, which includes the MATLAB
Compiler, the MATLAB C/C Math Library, and the
MATLAB C/C Graphics Library. These components
allow you to convert many MATLAB applications
that contain math, GUIs, and graphics to
stand-alone C/C code for faster execution, and
application distribution. Further information on
the Matlab Compiler Suite can be found at the
following URL - http//www.mathworks.com/mason/tag/proxy.html
?dataid560fileid1690 - This talk and all previous talks are available
on-line at - http//www.itc.virginia.edu/research/talks
- Questions, comments or concerns?