Grants

Grants

Research Computing Center Useful Information for Grant-writing

The text below is intended to provide most of the information your proposal will need, if it includes reference to the RCC for support of IT equipment or consulting in the use of IT equipment for your proposed research. We do not envision that each proposal will need all information. (Please contact Jerry NeSmith (.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)) and/or David Matthews-Morgan (.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)) for assistance in crafting language for your specific proposal, if required.

If your grant proposal includes the use of computing resources to be under the stewardship of the RCC, whether you intend to purchase new hardware or software or use what is already available to you the RCC can assist you in the following ways (given adequate lead time):

• Writing cost justifcations and Management Plan(s) for IT resources
• Preparing an IT budget
• Soliciting budget proposals from prospective hardware, software and/or service providers
• Conducting final negotiations with IT hardware, software and/or service providers before procurement

Existing RCC Instrumentation

Computers

• 284 nodes (1456 compute cores), and 54 low-latency InfiniBand-connected Linux nodes. All of these nodes are included in the queuing system of our Platform LSF queue management system.
• 2- IBM p655 AIX clusters with a total of 38 8-way nodes available to general users. One of these p655 frames is connected to the SURAgrid, making computing resources at other SURAgrid universities available to UGA’s researchers.
• An SGI Altix 3700 16 CPU, 32GB shared memory resource, which is used by general users from a broad cross-section of UGA’s research community.

Storage and Connectivity

The RCC has a three-tiered storage architecture.

• Tier 1 = 62TB (usable) on NetApp 960(c) and NetApp 3070GX storage subsystems;
• Tier 2 = Dell Equalogic storage.
• Tier 3 = 16TB (usable) NetApp R200 Nearstore subsystem and 96TB (raw) on Sun Fire X4500 subsystems.

All of the RCC’s existing frames and storage subsystems are interconnected using Foundry switches over private networks and protected by a pair of McAfee 4010 Intrusion Protection System (IPS) security appliances.

NOTE
If you are proposing to purchase equipment that will be housed in the RCC and managed by the RCC it is imperative that you contact Jerry NeSmith or David Matthews-Morgan to determine if the RCC can host your equipment, determine a price for hosting and for expert help in obtaining competitive quotes for the proposed equipment and any other devices that may be required to set it up and connect it to existing resources and networks.

Facilities

RCC managed equipment is located in UGA’s Boyd Data Center (BDC). The BDC is a 16,000 sq. ft. raised floor facility with a clean agent FM200/HFC125 fire suppression system and restricted physical access (card readers and intercom) and monitoring (alarms and recording camera systems). The BDC also has sufficient air handling, power, UPS and generator facilities to support all computing systems located there. Expandable access to Internet2, Southern Light Rail and National Lambda Rail networks are also available.

Operation and Maintenance of User Requested Instrumentation

The RCC has a fulltime technical staff of six, specializing in Linux/UNIX system administration, storage administration, computational computing, virtualization, and database administration, in support of researchers using the RCC-managed resources. The RCC provides better than 99.99% uptime to its users of computing and storage resources and serves over 100 principal investigators and over 400 total users.

The RCC has the following expertise:

• HPC cluster computing system administration, including cluster design, operating systems, job scheduling software, network design and administration, operating system security;
• Storage administration, including user data management, hardware troubleshooting, performance optimization, optimal availability, data security and subsystem design/configuration;
• System integration and administration using programming and scripting for data conversions, data analysis, and data migration;
• Software selection, installation, maintenance and troubleshooting, based on researchers’ needs, open source solutions, commercial offerings;
• Network administration, security, troubleshooting, design and implementation;
• Design, assistance in coding and debugging of HPC parallel computing programs, offering consultation and assistance to researchers and their staff;
• Consultation in the use of bioinformatics tools and referential databases;
• Expertise in business processes and accounting for management of the RCC in compliance with accounting practices and OMB Circular A-21.

History of the Research Computing Center

The Research Computing Center (RCC) was established in late 2003 as a partnership between the Office of the Chief Information Officer (CIO) and the Office of the Vice President for Research (OVPR). The RCC is governed by a Memorandum of Agreement between the two offices, with guidance from a faculty advisory committee and day-to-day leadership from two co-directors.

The RCC was founded, in large part, because it was apparent that the time and technical expertise required to manage high-performance computing and database platforms, software, storage, physical security, cyber security and telecommunications can be very significant. This is even more true as the scale of information technology infrastructure increases in response to trends in research methods and instrumentation.

Frequently, failure to use best practices in system administration, security and documentation of operating procedures are exacerbated by relatively high turnover rates of staff and post-docs in research labs and result in unacceptable risks for the loss of data, unacceptable risk of security compromises and other inefficiencies in support of lab operations. The RCC overcomes these issues by maintaining a professional, career-minded staff of technical experts whose sole goal is to support the information technology needs of research labs.