Indiana University

 

Indiana University Cyberinfrastructure News

  1. Several high-performance computational and storage resources will
    be unavailable between Monday, October 12, and Monday, October 19,
    as they are relocated from Wrubel Computing Center to the new IU
    Data Center.

    Systems affected by the move include:

    * Big Red cluster
    * Quarry cluster
    * Data Capacitor and DC-WAN storage systems
    * GPFS storage system
    * Mason Cell cluster

    Due to the number of ongoing enhancements and additions to Data
    Center infrastructure, this timeline may require adjustment.
    Timeline adjustments and milestones during the move will be posted
    as they are available at

         http://itnotices.iu.edu.

    If you need special accommodations before, during, or after the
    relocation process, please contact the UITS High-Performance Systems
    group at: hps-admin@iu.edu

  2. "Indiana University's Advanced Cyberinfrastructure: The Least You
    Need To Know" has been revised for the new academic year. The
    purpose of this document is to indicate what IU's facilities make
    possible, to discuss how to use them and to introduce the
    professional staff available to work with you. It is available at


         http://pti.iu.edu/cyberinfrastructure.pdf

  3. MDSS and RFS will be changed to authenticate with the ADS.IU.EDU
    Kerberos realm by September 14th, 2009, due to changes to the IU
    authentication infrastructure. This change is described at

         http://uits.iu.edu/page/ayjn

    The following methods of access to these systems are *NOT*
    affected by this change:
     - Using cifs, such as with a Windows drive mapped to
         \\rfs.iu.edu or \\smb.mdss.iu.edu
     - Via the web interface at https://rfs.iu.edu or
         https://www.mdss.iu.edu
     - With ssh file transfer clients such as sftp to rfs.iu.edu or
         to sftp.mdss.iu.edu.
     - TeraGrid GridFTP transfers.

    However, users of other access methods MUST make configuration
    changes in order to continue connecting after the switchover.
    These other methods include the native AFS client, FTP, and hsi.
    The changes must me made before September 14th, 2009. The required
    changes include updating keytabs, kerberos configuration and hsi
    clients. Instructions can be found at

         http://storage.iu.edu/adsmigrate.shtml

  4. TeraGrid resources are available, but you must submit a request for
    computing time or data storage space. The allocations process has
    been slightly revised -- the Development allocations have been
    replaced by Startup and Education allocations, which are larger
    than in the past, and explicitly support instruction.

    Researchers may request Startup or Education allocations at any
    time. These are treated as routine and processed immediately.
    These allocations give you access to some of the most advanced
    hardware in the world.

    Large allocations require a proposal, and are handled by the
    TeraGrid Resource Allocations Committee, which meets quarterly.
    The next submission window is September 15 - October 15, for
    allocations commencing January 1.

    Information on getting started with the Teragrid is available at

       http://pti.iu.edu/hpa/teragrid-support

  5. Data Services Day is dedicated to increasing awareness of the impact
    and advantages of databases and data management in research. You
    will have chance to talk with Oracle representatives, who will be
    discussing functionality related data analysis and access. UITS
    Research Technologies staff will present a general overview of
    databases as applied to research and the services IU offers to
    support the research community. And you also will hear stories from
    IU researchers on how they currently use some of these products and
    services to support their research.

    Breakfast and lunch will be provided. This event is free, but you
    must register to attend.

    - When: Tuesday, September 15, 8:30 AM - 5:00 PM
              (continental breakfast opens at 7:30 a.m.)
    - Where: University Place Conference Center on the IUPUI campus

    Talks presented during the Data Services Day general sessions will
    be webcast from the workshop web pages. For more information or to
    register for the event, please visit

         http://pervasive.iu.edu/dataservicesday

  6. Bioinformatics is the science of managing, mining, and extracting
    knowledge from biological sequences and structures. The goal of
    this Workshop is to present the latest research in high-performance
    computing applied to bioinformatics.

    The Parallel Bio-Computing Workshop will be held in conjunction
    with the Seventh International Conference on Parallel Processing
    and Applied Mathematics (PPAM 2009) in Wroclaw (Breslau), Poland,
    September 13-16, 2009.

    For more information, please visit the PBC web page:

        http://www.ppam.pl/pbc/

  7. * Lunch time with SysAdmins - Talk to the experts!

    You're invited to stop by and visit with the system administrators
    who run IU's supercomputers, Big Red and Quarry, two of the most
    powerful supercomputers in the world. Ask questions, share ideas,
    or just chat in an informal setting. This is an opportunity for
    you to learn how these centralized research computing resources
    can help support your work. The location changes each month.

    - When: September 14
    - Where: Lobby, Informatics East

    ---

    * Research Technologies Round Table

    - Fall Update

    Research Technologies (RT) maintains some of the most powerful
    supercomputers in the world, as part of a comprehensive strategy
    which includes computers, data storage systems, data collections,
    instrument and sensor networks, and technical support.

    As we head into fall, we'll take an updated look at Research
    Technologies' compute systems which include the Big Red and Quarry
    supercomputers, High Performance Storage Services, the Data
    Capacitor, the Quarry Gateway Hosting Service and the TeraGrid.
    For those of you new to IU, we'll have a general overview of these
    resources, how to access them, simple examples of common usage
    patterns, and an inventory of available support services.

    Following the overview we'll discuss the changes that occurred over
    the summer and those that are planned for the coming months,
    specifically the equipment move into the new IU Data Center coming
    up in October. System administrators will provide information on
    what you need to do now in order to minimize the disruption of your
    research activities during the week-long outage.

    When: Wednesday, September 23rd, 12:30-1:30pm
    Where: IMU Walnut Room (IU Bloomington); ICTC 497 (IUPUI)

    Live URL: http://tinyurl.com/n976xc
    Archive URL: http://tinyurl.com/leqwou

  8. * Data center maintenance, outage Sept. 10

    Most UITS services will be unavailable 4-5AM on Thursday, Sept 11,
    due to scheduled maintenance of the IU Bloomington data center.

    This will affect services that require Network ID authentication
    such as the Massive Data Storage Service, email, TIME, Oncourse,
    and OneStart. IU Web services (IU campus web pages, MySQL, Mypage,
    the Knowledge Base, and streaming media, among others) will also be
    unavailable. Only ssh key based and certificate based authentication
    to Big Red or Quarry will work for new connections during that
    interval, but existing sessions would be unaffected.

    For a complete list of affected services, see:

    http://itnotices.iu.edu/notice.aspx?id=13302

    ----------

    The maintenance window for Big Red and Quarry is the first Tuesday
    of each month, 7am - 7pm EDT.

    The maintenance window for the Mass Store and Research File System
    is every Sunday 7-10AM.

    Outage reports are available online at:

    * http://racinfo.indiana.edu/hps/research/bigred/outages.shtml
    * http://racinfo.indiana.edu/hps/research/libra/outages.shtml
    * http://racinfo.indiana.edu/hps/research/quarry/outages.shtml

  9. If you have questions pertaining to IU's cyberinfrastructure, or
    you are encountering some difficulty, there are several ways to
    obtain help.

    The IU Knowledge Base (http://kb.iu.edu) is an excellent source of
    help on how to do things.

    An introduction and overview titled "Indiana University's
    CyberInfrastructure: The least you need to know" is available at

         http://pti.iu.edu/cyberinfrastructure.pdf

    If you have problems which the KB does not enable you to solve,
    questions about system outages, or if you just have a problem and
    you don't know who to contact, send email to
    researchtechnologies@iu.edu.