Information Technology News Archive

1996 - 2017

Greenplanet: Cluster Computing for Physical Sciences

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Greenplanet

Physical Sciences, with support from IAT-NACS, has assembled a high-performance computing cluster for climate modeling and other computational-intensive research.

Called “Greenplanet,” the cluster comprises nodes purchased by faculty in Earth Systems Sciences (ESS), Chemistry, and Physics, and it is expected that Math faculty will also participate.  At this time, Greenplanet includes almost 900 CPUs and is still growing.

IAT provides secure, climate-controlled space in the Academic Data Center,  system administration services as a team with Physical Sciences IT staff, and consultation on code parallelization and optimization.

According to Assistant Professor Keith Moore of ESS, Greenplanet is “a flexible cluster, suitable for massively parallel complex computations (such as climate simulations), and for smaller-scale use on a single node as a workstation.”

A typical node features 8 64-bit Intel CPUs.  Greenplanet features the Load Sharing Facility (LSF) for job management and the Lustre caching file system for extremely high-performance access to the large datasets typical of climate modeling.  Two message passing techniques are available for parallel code: OpenMP for communication between CPUs on a node, and MPI for communication between CPUs on different nodes.  Greenplanet also has the high-performance Infiniband interlink between nodes for high-speed communications.  There is extensive instrumentation available for tuning jobs to optimal execution speed and use of all available computational capacity in the cluster.

Software includes the Climate Systems Modeling package, parallel Matlab, and quantum chemistry packages such as Gaussian and Turbomole.

UCI Identity and Access Management Website

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IDM

IAT-NACS provides a suite of identity management, authentication, and authorization services collectively referred to as Identity and Access Management services. A group of web pages has been developed describing UCI network identities (e.g., UCInetIDs), how they work, and how they will evolve.  There is a wealth of information for those interested in technical details.  Here are some highlights.

The campus directory provides contact information for campus affiliates, and allows you to control certain information pertaining to your network presence on campus, such as the server your UCI email should be sent to.

UCInetIDs are network identities issued to campus affiliates.  With your UCInetID and password, you can access a variety of online services, many through WebAuth.  IAT has recently extended UCInetID authentication, with appropriate limits, to applicants for admission, and third parties for whom some services will be provided.

UC Trust is a system for using each campus’s network authentication system (UCInetIDs at UCI) to access services, as appropriate, provided by other UC campuses as well as some companies whose services are restricted to UC affiliates.

Because UCInetIDs are so vital to conducting University business, IAT has developed plans for enhancing UCInetID security.  Also, as the number of users, past and present, grows, it will be necessary to upgrade UCInetIDs beyond their current 8-character limit.  You can read about this project online as well.

Conference Calls with UCI Phones

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<br /> Cisco IP Phone

Conference calls make a cost-effective alternative to traveling to meetings.  UCI’s phone system supports conference calls for 3 to 8 people, including up to 6 off-campus participants.  For larger groups, commercial options such as QWEST are available.

For faculty and staff with a Cisco IP phone, even more flexibility is available with “meet me” conference calling.  This kind of conference call can support up to 16 users, any number of which can be off campus.  Once one or more parties have joined the call, the originator can leave the conference without disruption.  However, since this requires a special-purpose extension to be reserved for the conference, please call Telephone Customer Service (x4-5123) at least a day in advance.

Phone conferences can be enhanced with tools that allow on-line sharing of documents and desktops.  A systemwide agreement has recently been concluded with ReadyTalk, and other products are on the way.

More Space on Webfiles

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WebFiles

Webfiles is a campus filesharing service available to faculty, staff, and graduate students.  Using a simple Web interface, users can upload files to be shared and specify a wide variety of access restrictions, specifying individuals or groups, number of allowed accesses, or a time window of accessibility.  NACS offers quarterly classes in the use of Webfiles.

NACS has recently doubled the disk space available to users from 1 gigabyte (Gb) to 2Gb.  More information on the use of Webfiles can be found online.