Firstly a big thanks to all those who made use of our infrastructure last year, we accumulated over 114,000 CPU hours and increased our core count from 24 to 150. Our plans for 2012 is to grow this resource and to continue making it available campus wide to UCT researchers. Below are some of our targets for 2012:
Increased number of cores: We're aiming for 200+ cores, however in the 3rd Q 2012 we'll be doing a review of our server infrastructure to ascertain whether our recycleprecycle method of server provisioning is still viable.
Increased RAM: While we've been able to source several 32GB RAM machines (and more will become available 2nd Q 2012) we acknowledge that this is an order of magnitude less than some researchers require. Our server review program will take this issue into account.
Storage: We've been a bit quiet about storage because over the past few months we've been engaged in RFP processes for new equipment. We have purchased several storage technologies recently that over time will replace or supersede our current EVA8000. Our new third tier storage system (dual BackBlaze servers) which will be presented to our HPC cluster is currently being installed and configured. It will provide 24TB of useable, replicated storage.
eResearch Portal: The dashboard for ICTS's HPC services can still be found here: https://ucthpc.uct.ac.za however we're expecting in UCT's new eResearch portal to be rolled out in the following weeks.
Grid integration: In the following weeks we will be upgrading our Grid cluster and testing possible integration with our HPC services.