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Research Support

New Computing Cluster

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Computer Cluster

Computer Cluster

Last year, Broadcom graciously donated over 400 compute servers to UC Irvine. While the majority of the servers were distributed to campus researchers, NACS and the Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences have collaborated to bring a new general-purpose campus computing solution to researchers and graduate students at no charge.

Initially, the Broadcom Distributed Unified Cluster (BDUC) is comprised of 80 nodes: 40 nodes with 32-bit Intel processors and 40 nodes with 64-bit AMD processors. Broadcom is expected to donate newer servers over time, allowing nodes to be upgraded.  NACS and ICS plan to further expand the cluster as well, subject to available staff and Data Center resources.

BDUC includes standard open-source compilers, debuggers, and libraries; in addition, the MATLAB Distributed Computing Engine (DCE) will soon be available.  In the near future, BDUC will offer priority queues for research groups that provide financial support or hardware to the cluster.

BDUC is now available to all faculty, staff, and graduate using your UCInetID and password. To request an account, send an e-mail to bduc-request@uci.edu.  A new user how-to guide is available on the NACS website http://www.nacs.uci.edu/computing/bduc/newuser.html.

Saving Money through Strategic Sourcing

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In the current budgetary climate, faculty and staff should be aware of the opportunities for saving money on academic software and computer equipment that NACS coordinates.

NACS works with representatives from the other UC campuses to leverage the buying power of the multi-campus system to negotiate a variety of discounted software licensing contracts.  Among the research software for which UCI has licensing programs are the mathematics packages Matlab and Mathematica, the statistical packages SAS and SPSS, and GIS software from ESRI.  You can explore UCI’s software licensing agreements online.

UCI also participates in UC’s Microsoft Consolidated Campus Agreement (MCCA) wherein units can purchase annual licenses for Microsoft software such as Windows and Office for all computers owned by the unit.  NACS can help units determine whether this option fits their needs.  Information on this and other options for purchasing Microsoft software is available online.

Finally, UCI has a strategic sourcing agreement with KST Data which provides discounts on the purchase of new desktop and laptop computers.

Moving Bulk Data

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Bulk Data

Moving Bulk Data

Data transfer is a routine activity for most faculty, whether it’s sharing research data with colleagues, downloading research databases, or backing up vital data.  When the volume of data you’re transferring is in the tens or hundreds of megabytes, any tool can get the job done.  When you have gigabytes, or tens of gigabytes of data to move, more strategy is called for.

The tool and strategy you should use depends on the kind of data you have, the size of the data, whether you need to do the transfer once or repeatedly, and the computer and tools you’re most comfortable with.  Some ideas are outlined below, but NACS’s Research Computing Support maintains a detailed discussion with links to sites from which you can get data transfer tools.

Two basic strategies exist which can reduce the actual volume of data you need to transfer: compression and synchronization.  Unless your data is already in a compressed form (say, MP3 files), compression can save a great deal of time and network capacity.  Many transfer tools can even do on-the-fly compression.  If your files contain sensitive information, you may wish to consider encrypting the data you’re transferring, although this imposes a small time penalty.

The second strategy, particularly when you’re regularly moving the same data, is to use a synchronization tool that recognizes that only part of your data is new and needs to be transferred.  This can be particularly convenient if you have an entire directory tree you wish to send over the network.

A final technique which might apply in some cases is to make the best possible use of the network, either by setting up multiple parallel data-transfer streams, or even creating a special-purpose GridFTP node.  RCS staff can help you analyze your data transfer needs, choose a method, and set up your system.

RCS staff will also coordinate with NACS Network Engineers to ensure they are aware of research data transfer needs in various campus locations.  This will help inform future network upgrade plans.  In addition, in a few cases, it may be possible to upgrade network connections to higher speed to support critical research requirements.

Online Geographic Information System Services

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Geographic Information System (GIS) software has traditionally been used on desktop computers to develop, display, and analyze spatial data.  Recent advances in web-based GIS software now allow researchers and instructors to upload their spatial data to online GIS services.  Colleagues and students can then view and query — and even edit — GIS data online via a web browser and without having GIS software installed on their desktop computers.

NACS uses ESRI’s ArcGIS Server to provide online GIS services.  Development of a new online GIS service is straightforward.  Once an ArcGIS Desktop document is developed, the document and associated GIS data files are uploaded to an ArcGIS Server. A GIS service is generated and custom data queries are assigned. The URL for this new GIS service can then be distributed for users to visit the new site.

NACS has been developing GIS services using ArcGIS Server for two years.  If you are interested in making your GIS data available online, we can develop a GIS service on our server using your data, or we can help you set up ArcGIS Server on your own or a departmental system.

Here are a few ArcGIS Server applications running on the NACS GIS server.  When viewing these GIS services, consider how your own spatial data might be displayed and explored using ArcGIS Server.

Recent Southern California fires (Freeway, Tea, and Sayre) using ESRI basemap data and fire perimeters collected by the Geospatial Multi-Agency Coordination.

California No Child Left Behind, within the UCI Department of Education.

History of North American Indians used for instruction within the UCI Department of History.

High Speed Academic Networking

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Cenic

CENIC Network

The Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California (CENIC — http://www.cenic.org/)  and UC have been discussing a possible new network infrastructure.  The intent is to facilitate ad-hoc, point-to-point, gigabit research network connections among UC campuses and other institutions (including Stanford and USC) connected to CENIC’s High Performance Research (HPR) Network.

This new infrastructure would parallel the existing production network links and could provide two distinctive services: dedicated, low-latency bandwidth to researchers’ labs for special applications, and optical connections for network protocol development or similar activities.

A Zotmail to all faculty recently went out to identify those with needs in this area.  Faculty input is sought to guide NACS on how to proceed and at what priority relative to other network needs. For more information, please join the discussion mailing list high-speed-networking@uci.edu .

Meanwhile, if you transfer research data sets over the network, and the speed of doing so is impeding your work, we want to hear from you.  Please contact NACS at x42222 or email nacs@uci.edu .