1. Scientific Advisory Committee – September 2011COLA Information Systems COLA’s Information Systems 2011

2. Scientific Advisory Committee – September 2011COLA Information Systems Computing at COLA Maximizing Productivity and Collaboration IT culture of service to scientists Focus is on in-house data analysis – Large spinning disk volumes, ~400TB – Shared access to data – Servers for data analysis GrADS – Primary tool for data analysis and visualization

3. Scientific Advisory Committee – September 2011COLA Information Systems atlas1 1 node @ 24 cores 256 GB atlas1 1 node @ 24 cores 256 GB /homes 8 TB /homes 8 TB /shared 100 TB /shared 100 TB cpuX 6 nodes @ 8 cores 24-32 GB cpuX 6 nodes @ 8 cores 24-32 GB colaXX 2 nodes @ 8 cores 32 GB colaXX 2 nodes @ 8 cores 32 GB COLA Data Center Backups Infiniband (DDR) Internet 2 1Gb/s Internet 2 1Gb/s Internet 1 20Mb/s Internet 1 20Mb/s Ethernet 1Gb/s Quantum i6000 library Nightly backups ~50 TB tape archive /project 33 TB /project 33 TB /data 250 TB /data 250 TB

4. Scientific Advisory Committee – September 2011COLA Information Systems Offsite Resources NCAR (CISL) – Bluefire, Mirage – 20TB project space – 448TB tape archive Oak Ridge, NICS (XSEDE) – Kraken, Nautilus – Scratch only disk space – 1.2PB tape archive NASA Ames (NAS) – Pleiades – 1TB project disk space – 325TB Tape archive Total: ~10 million CPU hours

5. Scientific Advisory Committee – September 2011COLA Information Systems Offsite Computing Trade-offs Resources are shared, not dedicated (multi-project/multi-purpose systems) Relatively small amounts of online disk space Disk and tape throughput issues – Islands of disk Lack of cross-site data analysis capabilities

6. Scientific Advisory Committee – September 2011COLA Information Systems Onsite Computing Benefits Complete autonomy and flexibility – Scientists have easy access to IS staff – IS staff can quickly respond to science needs Fast, cost-effective, large spinning disk volume Subsets from all remote projects stored and analyzed locally Shared data and analysis methods support broad COLA-wide collaborations

7. Scientific Advisory Committee – September 2011COLA Information Systems Data Management New, more scalable design – builds on collaboration with NCAR-CISL Isolate and curate frequently used static data (shared) – Active oversight by Data Management Committee – Scientists make data management decisions Organize remaining data files and scripts (project) Tape archive and retrieval Catalog shared data /project 33 TB /project 33 TB /shared 100 TB /shared 100 TB

8. Scientific Advisory Committee – September 2011COLA Information Systems Future of COLA Computing We are anticipating challenges from the next generation of data sets: – From community: CFSRR, CMIP5, etc. – COLA-generated: ISI, Decadal, … Athena project foreshadowed many obstacles 3-year plan now in place to meet these challenges – expecting to learn valuable lessons – GrADS is an essential component of strategy