---------------------------------------------------------------------- H H PPP CCC UK NATIONAL HPC SERVICE H H P P C C -------------------------- HHHHH PPP C x x provided by H H P C C xx EPCC and H H P CCC x x CCLRC Daresbury Laboratory ---------------------------------------------------------------------- HPCx User Mailing 037 1 April 2004 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Contents ** Phase 2: progress report ** HPCx Phase 2 workshop and NERC consortia meeting ** UK National Grid Service ** Online reporting on the website ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Greetings-- MOVING TO PHASE 2 - PROGRESS REPORT Early use of the Phase 2 platform started on 31 March. The implementation project is still in line with the timetable I sent round in Mailing 30 on 23 January. I shall report progress again in a fortnight's time. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- HPCx PHASE2 WORKSHOP AND NERC CONSORTIA MEETING This one-day event will be held on Wednesday 26th May at University College London. The aim of this meeting is to allow users to discuss issues arising from the upgrade of the HPCx service with members of the HPCx support team. The morning session is, by request, targeted specifically at users from NERC consortia, while the afternoon session is open to all users. We will present a couple of talks on our own experiences from the support side, but we are very keen to have as much input as possible from HPCx users. This will be a fairly informal event where we hope to spend most of the time discussing issues that are raised during the course of the day. The provisional schedule is: 10:30 -- 12:30 NERC user meeting 14:00 -- 17:00 Phase2 Workshop If you are interested in attending, please email Kevin Stratford . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- UK NATIONAL GRID SERVICE [The following is an announcement by NGS] >From the 5th April 2004, the UK National Grid Service (NGS) enters its initial production phase, which is funded to provide a significant resource for the UK e-Science Community. The four new clusters, supplied and maintained by ClusterVision and hosted by the University of Manchester, CCLRC (Rutherford Appleton Laboratory), University of Oxford and the White Rose Grid (Leeds) are now available for early-adopter users to register. As part of the initial 'core' the NGS also includes access to the resources of the HPCx and CSAR services. Building on the experiences of the UK e-Science community and in particular the work achieved by the Engineering Task Force (ETF) in building the UK e-Science 'Level 2 Grid' last year, Tony Hey initiated the UK NGS to provide not only a significant resource for research that allows users to 'do science using grid technologies', but also an infrastructure to which new resources can be added in the future. Following the initial phase, the UK National Grid Service will enter its full production stage. At present, access to the service is guided by the NGS management board. The aim of this is to maximise the potential of these new resources and to encourage existing or new projects to experiment and utilise grid technology in their work. Available to users are 2 compute and 2 data facilities (the services of HPCx and CSAR are treated separately as they have existing funding mechanisms for users). The compute facilities comprise 64 dual-CPU Intel 3.06GHz nodes, whilst the data facilities comprise 20 dual-CPU Intel 3.06GHz nodes and 18TB Fibre SAN storage, giving a total of 36TB of storage across both sites available to users of the NGS. Further information on the UK National Grid Service and how to register as a user can be found at: http://www.ngs.ac.uk/ or by emailing support@grid-support.ac.uk. If you have resources that you would like to integrate into the NGS then contact a.j.richards@dl.ac.uk. Notes: * The UK National Grid Service (NGS) comprising two data clusters and two compute clusters is funded by JISC and CCLRC. * The size of the clusters is such that they offer a significant resource for the UK e-Science community. * The clusters are located at Manchester (data cluster), Oxford (compute cluster), CCLRC (data cluster) and the White Rose Grid (compute cluster). * JISC are funding one staff post at each site to ensure that the clusters are professionally managed and to enable a production grid software stack to implemented. An additional post at CCLRC-RAL is the Grid Coordinator who will oversee the project and ensure that it is a success. * CSAR and HPCx are also part of the core NGS but they have their own funding arrangements and user policies. Other sites are already in negotiation to commit resources to the NGS. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ONLINE REPORTING ON THE WEBSITE A reminder that you can use your website account to get reports on your own use of the service, and on the use of the service as a whole. Principal Investigators and project managers can also get reports on the use of the service by their project. To do this, log in to your website account, move to the bottom of the page and click "Go to the report generator". The report generator allows you to select a time period, and the reports you want. You can also select HTML, PDF or CSV formats. Depending on the complexity, you may have to wait for a few minutes for your report. The monthly and quarterly reports which we send to EPSRC are available on the open website: http://www.hpcx.ac.uk/projects/reports/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Regards --John ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Earlier mailings: http://www.hpcx.ac.uk/support/notices/index.html To be removed from the mailing list: log into your website account, go to the "Update" page, and click the "Opt out of user emails" field; then click "Commit update". -- John Fisher j.fisher@epcc.ed.ac.uk HPCx User Administration and Helpdesk HPCx: http://www.hpcx.ac.uk Helpdesk: support@hpcx.ac.uk Phone: +44 131 650 5029 Fax: +44 131 650 6555