Chip Scheduled for Downtime September 3rd
On Wednesday Sept 3rd from 0800-1800 (ET), the chip cluster will be taken offline.
During this time, DoIT will be making the following changes:
•Changing how chip-gpu's slurm allocations work
•Implement changes that will improve availability of the cluster to users
We will post again when downtime is completed.
General notes for the coming weeks:
As we start the new semester, we expect an influx of tickets from users (both new and old) to come in, please be patient with us as we work through requests.
Max Breitmeyer
UMBC HPCF System Administrator
]]>
On Wednesday Sept 3rd from 0800-1800 (ET), the chip cluster will be taken offline. During this time, DoIT will be making the following changes: •Changing how chip-gpu's slurm allocations work...
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https://dev.my.umbc.edu/groups/hpcf
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HPCF
0
0
true
Mon, 18 Aug 2025 15:43:42 -0400
Mon, 18 Aug 2025 15:46:22 -0400
June HPCF Newsletter
Hi everyone,
I’m writing to give everyone an update regarding the UMBC HPCF, particularly the new Retriever Research Storage System (RRStor). The Research Computing team within DoIT works to send these newsletters to keep everyone using our infrastructure informed and aware of any changes and new support structures we generate.
System Status
The chip HPC is operating normally and is fully operational.
Updates: Migration of Storage Volumes
University budget cuts have compelled us to carefully examine the enterprise storage systems we maintain. While the new Ceph Storage Cluster (RRStor) is here to stay, the Isilon storage system will be sunset at the end of this calendar year. The Isilon storage system was purchased at the start of the COVID-19 Pandemic, but its proprietary file system, high cost of expansion, and high software support costs make it no longer feasible for us to maintain.
Instead, we’ll be taking a portion of the saved expense from the Isilon and dedicating it to expanding RRStor and its capabilities. This will require that we migrate research storage volumes from the Isilon Storage System to Ceph before the end of the calendar year. This represents the careful movement of more than 2PiB of data, so DoIT Research Computing staff will be working with researchers to schedule the migration of their storage volumes. Note that the duration of each volume migration will depend on the size of the volume.
Research Volume Name:To avoid conflicts with volume names as this process begins and to avoid future confusion with group names and research volume names, we’ll be deploying new research volumes with the following syntax: “/umbc/rs/groupName” . So group “pi_doit” will find its data under “/umbc/rs/pi_doit” and group “nsf2346667” under “/umbc/rs/nsf2346667” . Each faculty PI group storage quota will be at least 10TiB.
Migration Process:Our plan for migrating data from the old system to the new system would entail the Research Computing team contacting each PI and scheduling a transition date before October 15. Before this date, the Research Computing team will make a copy of the research volume on the new system. On this date, the Research Computing team will disable the old volumes and the new volumes will be active. A month later, the old volumes will be deleted as we disable the entire old storage system. In most cases, there should be nothing for individual users or PIs to do when migrating this data.
User Support: Introducing Drop-in Office Hours
We’re pleased to announce a series of drop-in office hours that will occur each week on Mondays in ENGR 102 from 1500ET-1600ET. Participants may join in person or virtually. See the HPCF myUMBC Group Events page for more details. Otherwise …
Please continue to make use of the HPCF Office Hours.
We’re always working to make our Wiki Documentation better for users. Please let us know if we’ve missed something.
Stay tuned for more in-person training and tutorials.
SIG
The SIG-CPU and SIG-GPU Committees have met and selected members. Please see the Shared Infrastructure Governance webpage for more information. The Slurm workload manager and faculty contribution models are among the first topics discussed in these groups.
Publications
If you have any publications, presentations, theses, or other works that made use of the campus cluster(s), please submit an RT Ticket with bibliographic information so that we can accurately reflect this work in our records and on the HPCF Website.
Need Help?
As always, please communicate any issues/questions to the Research Computing RT Queue (hpcf.umbc.edu > User Support > Request Help).
Max Breitmeyer
HPC and Unix GA
Hi everyone,
I’m writing to give everyone an update regarding the UMBC HPCF, particularly the new Retriever Research Storage System (RRStor).
System Status
The chip HPC is operating normally and is fully operational.
Updates: 10TiB Storage Allocations for All HPCF PIs
We’ve expanded our enterprise research storage infrastructure with funds from last year’s NSF CC* Award! All research groups now have a 10TiB default quota. The DoIT Research Computing Team will be working with each research group to migrate to the larger volumes. Please note that this change to the default quota is for research storage directories shared by entire research groups and not for individual users’ home directories. Every user home directory has a default quota of 500MiB.
Pro Tip: Any user can use the “hpc_tools/quotas” module to see how much of their storage quotas have been used. This runs by default when a users logs in.
User Support
Please continue to make use of the HPCF Office Hours
We’re always working to make our Wiki Documentation better for users, please let us know if we’ve missed something
Stay tuned for more in-person training and tutorials
SIG
The first meetings of the SIG-CPU and SIG-GPU subcommittees have met. For members of the SIG-GPU subcommittee, please be sure to review the most recent meeting notes sent by Karuna.
Publications
If you have any publications, presentations, theses, or other works that made use of the campus cluster(s), please submit an RT Ticket with bibliographic information so that we can accurately reflect this work in our records and on the HPCF Website.
Need Help?
As always, please communicate any issues/questions to the Research Computing RT Queue (hpcf.umbc.edu > User Support > Request Help).
Thanks for reading,
Roy Prouty
Assistant Director for Research Computing
UMBC DoIT
]]>
Hi everyone, I’m writing to give everyone an update regarding the UMBC HPCF, particularly the new Retriever Research Storage System (RRStor). System Status The chip HPC is operating normally...
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HPCF
0
0
true
Mon, 19 May 2025 15:06:13 -0400
April HPCF Newsletter
Hi everyone,
I'm writing to give a brief update on the status of a few projects related to the UMBC HPCF and Research Computing.
System Status
The chip HPC is now operating normally and is fully operational.
Updates: To find everything you need related to HPC go to our updated website!
On the HPCF website you can find user documentation and request help.
A new tab, “User Support” has been added to the top-level menu bar of the HPCF Webpage. Under this tab, you can find “Request Help”, “Office Hours”, and “User Documentation”.
- The “Request Help” tab takes you directly to the RT Ticket form for Research Computing. Please use the “High Performance Cluster” option for help with chip and “Research Storage” for help with storage allocations.
- The “Office Hours” tab takes you to a page describing a service now formally offered by the DoIT Research Computing team. You can sign-up for an in-person or virtual meeting with a team member for help navigating the new chip cluster or other HPC-related questions.
- The “User Documentation” tab takes you directly to the Research Computing portion of the university wiki deployment wiki.umbc.edu .
Pro Tip: In addition to the above, we encourage all users to read through our “Getting Started with chip” wiki page. If you notice an issue with the user documentation, please open an RT Ticket and use the “Suggest a change to Research Computing” to raise the issue with the Research Computing team.
Trainings: Getting Started with chip
The DoIT Research Computing team has scheduled a series of “Getting Started with chip”. These events are all scheduled on the HPCF myUMBC group. Each of these events are identical. This series is meant for all users but especially those who were users on the ada or taki clusters. The format of each is hybrid and each will run for one hour. There will be a short tutorial, and a portion of the time will be dedicated to Q & A.
SIG
The first SIG-CPU meeting was held March 24th. The first SIG-GPU meeting is scheduled for April 18th. See the SIG Webpage for more information.
Publications
If you have any publications, presentations, theses, or other works that made use of the campus cluster(s), please submit an RT Ticket with bibliographic information so that we can accurately reflect this work in our records and on the HPCF Website.
Need Help?
As always, please communicate any issues/questions to the Research Computing RT Queue (hpcf.umbc.edu > User Support > Request Help).
Roy Prouty
Asst Dir Research Computing, DoIT
]]>
Hi everyone, I'm writing to give a brief update on the status of a few projects related to the UMBC HPCF and Research Computing. System Status The chip HPC is now operating normally and...
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HPCF
0
0
true
Tue, 15 Apr 2025 17:13:11 -0400
Fri, 18 Apr 2025 09:18:32 -0400
March HPCF Newsletter
Hi everyone,
I'm writing to give a brief update on the status of a few projects related to the UMBC HPCF and Research Computing.
System Status
The new chip HPC is still in its “soft launch” phase. We expect the system to move to a “normal operations” on April 10. In the meantime, please communicate any issues/questions to the Research-Computing RT Queue.
Migration
All users and groups that existed on ada and taki now exist on chip. All users can login to chip, but note that 2FA via Duo is required unless you are already on the campus VPN.
In this soft launch phase, the compute hardware from ada and taki are being migrated into chip. Nearly half of ada and taki have already been integrated into chip. The remaining machines will be brought over in the days between April 3 and April 10.
Requesting Help
The scope of this queue is being broadened beyond the HPCF to include cloud computing, data management, data center space requests, and consultations around research computing and data. For now, any queries related to research computing as described above can be directed to the Research Computing RT queue. The Research-Computing RT Form is in the process of being updated to reflect this broadened scope.
Find the Research-Computing RT Form at hpcf.umbc.edu > Forms .
Website & User Documentation
The HPCF Website is in the process of being updated. The user documentation is in the process of being ported to the university wiki deployment at wiki.umbc.edu under Computing & Technology > Research Computing.
Publications
If you have any publications, presentations, theses, or other works that made use of the campus cluster(s), please submit an RT Ticket with bibliographic information so that we can accurately reflect this work in our records and on the HPCF Website.
Governance
The SIG Subcommittee on Advanced CPU met for the first time Monday March 24, 2025.
The SIG Subcommittee on Advanced GPU will meet in April, time and location TBD.
The SIG Subcommittee on Cloud Computing will meet in late April or May, time and location TBD.
Thanks for reading!
Roy Prouty
Assistant Director for Research Computing
UMBC DoIT
]]>
Hi everyone, I'm writing to give a brief update on the status of a few projects related to the UMBC HPCF and Research Computing. System Status The new chip HPC is still in its “soft...
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HPCF
1
0
true
Thu, 27 Mar 2025 08:26:12 -0400
Wed, 16 Apr 2025 09:06:09 -0400
Seeking Research Computing RA Starting 5/18/25
The Division of Information Technology (
DoIT) and the Center for Scalable Data and Computational Science (
ScaleS) are collaborating to better facilitate research at UMBC that could benefit from advanced computing and data facilities and services e.g., High Performance Computing, Cloud Computing, and Data Management.
As part of this collaboration, we plan to hire one or two full-time Research Computing RAs (Summer 2025 - Spring 2026). The RAs are expected to start on 05/18, 2025. Like regular GA positions, this RA contract will also support the students to work for 20 hours per week on average for Research Computing related tasks.
If you are a UMBC undergraduate or graduate student, has relevant skills (such as Unix, shell scripting, HPC, Cloud, and Python), and are interested in working with UMBC faculty and staff on research computing related activities. Please submit your application using this
form (
https://forms.gle/MeoeusncUEBbJuqA7) before
Friday 03/21 to receive full consideration.
FAQ
Q1: What does the role entail?
A1: The successful applicant would spend >75% of their time working on UMBC Research Computing User Support initiatives. These might include answering RT tickets, developing trainings, meeting with users, and similar. The remaining <25% of their time could be spent on HPC research tasks as identified by the applicant and the supervisors (Dr. Jianwu Wang and Roy Prouty).
Q2: What would the working environment be like?
A2: The successful applicant would work on-site 100% of the time in a DoIT-provided space and with a DoIT-provided machine. They would work along-side other DoIT student workers and attend weekly team meetings.
The DoIT Research Computing Team has deployed a new High-Performance Computing Cluster, chip. This new cluster is better equipped to handle the variety of research workflows than ada or taki. The chip cluster has an updated software stack, redundant and more reliable head nodes, and a high-speed connection to the newly deployed ceph storage cluster which provides more than 2PB of storage within Retriever Research Storage (RRStor).
With the chip cluster now available to contributing faculty, the DoIT Research Computing Team will begin to migrate the older CPU and GPU hardware from ada and taki to chip. The timeline for this migration is separated into three phases.
Phase 1: February 20 - March 2
All users and groups will be duplicated on chip as they exist on ada & taki
Deploy of new RT form for account & group creation on chip
All account, group, and software requests will be redirected to chip
Phase 2: March 3 - April 2
All ada & taki users will be able to login to ada, taki, & chip
Half of the machines from ada & taki will be migrated to chip
Phase 3: April 3 - April 10
We know this transition may be disruptive to current research groups using the cluster and apologize in advance for any inconvenience this may cause.
Please note that all research storage available on ada or taki is available on chip.
]]>
The DoIT Research Computing Team has deployed a new High-Performance Computing Cluster, chip. This new cluster is better equipped to handle the variety of research workflows than ada or taki. The...
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HPCF
1
0
false
Thu, 20 Feb 2025 13:58:03 -0500
Wed, 16 Apr 2025 09:05:23 -0400
Free Webinar: LLMs for Science
Hi Everyone,
We wanted to make you aware of a free webinar offered through the Internet2 consortium.
Title: From Knowledge to Discovery: Harnessing Large Language Models as Co-pilots for Scientific Research
Instructor: Astitva Chopra, program manager for AI for Science at Google
Time: Tuesday Nov. 19, 2024; 12 p.m. ET – 1 p.m. ET
Duration: 1 hour
Cost: FREE
Delivery: Virtual via Zoom
Let us know if you end up attending and if you find the content useful!
Roy Prouty
HPCF System Administrator
UMBC DoIT
]]>
Hi Everyone, We wanted to make you aware of a free webinar offered through the Internet2 consortium. Title: From Knowledge to Discovery: Harnessing Large Language Models as Co-pilots for...
https://internet2.edu/cloud/from-knowledge-to-discovery-harnessing-large-language-models-as-co-pilots-for-scientific-research/
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HPCF
0
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true
Wed, 13 Nov 2024 08:22:25 -0500
HPCF Publications Reporting
Please send recent publications and theses
Dear Colleagues and all users of HPCF,
Documenting research outcomes in the form of publications is the most important documentation of the usefulness of HPCF! So, it is a good time again close to the semester end to ask you e-mail me citations of papers. Please, send to
gobbert@umbc.edu
Please include theses of any kind (undergrad, MS, PhD, etc.), since those are a really nice component of the usefulness of HPCF for students!
No PDF of any publications is needed, but just the citation. If you have a PDF, we are happy to post it. If you have the URL of the publication (e.g., journal or arXiv, etc.), we can post that. Or both.
]]>
Dear Colleagues and all users of HPCF, Documenting research outcomes in the form of publications is the most important documentation of the usefulness of HPCF! So, it is a good time again...
http://hpcf.umbc.edu/
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HPCF
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Wed, 01 May 2024 16:01:09 -0400
HPCF User Meeting Friday 01/26/2024
10:00 am in Math/Psyc 102/103
Dear Colleagues and all users of HPCF,
TL;DR:
(i) user meeting Fri 01/26/2024 10:00 in MP102/103,
(ii) send publication info!
(iii) hopefully MRI proposal this year
Publications:
To start with item (ii), since it is really the most important, please always remember to send me the citation of publications that we can list on the HPCF webpage! This is invaluable to demonstrate our community's weight for our university administration -- all new by now really! -- and will be used in future NSF (or other) proposals. Include student theses (undergrad, MS, PhD), as well, please.
User meeting:
Item (i) calls for a general user meeting next Friday 01/26/2024 at 10:00, which is the Friday before semester start. I will be in the physical location Math/Pysc 102 or 103, depending on crowd size, but the meeting will also be in Webex and recorded. The Webex link will be in the reminder posting on Friday morning. If you plan to attend, maybe reply to this mail -- with indication of in-person or online -- so I can plan (and make doubly sure you receive the web link). In particular if you have to RSVP negative, feel free to include notes (see below).
HPCF proposals / purchases:
I really thank a user who reminded me by asking about purchase (and MRI) that I should inform you all better. Some of you may recall me saying -- and certainly sharing with the governance committee -- that we should participate in the November 2023 NSF MRI competition. Since the NSF changed the time frame, this was the second MRI competition in the year after one in January 2023. Future ones will be in November of each year. In fact, I had been suggesting throughout the preceding year that we should hold back on any purchase, until after that MRI was submitted (so we do not look rich at the time of submission). Given I am aware of 10+ faculty who were at some point ready to contribute funding, my suggestion was not crazy, but did lose out on the energy of the willingness to contribute at the time.
Last year 2023, we had a task force on computing (under the RCA and led by the VPs for Research and for IT, chaired by our own Zhibo Zhang and Karuna Joshi). When this taskforce came together, it was frankly a year after the intent had been born, yet it was clever timing in that we were supposed to have a new provost, so I understand the thinking of the VPs. It would yet have fit with the timing that I angled for, but the taskforce worked out quite differently than expected by me at least. In short, the taskforce also considered many other aspects of computing (cloud) and necessary issues (storage, controlled access needed by certain types of research, etc.), so HPCF was not the focus. Inasmuch as HPCF was a focus at times, there was an endorsement of the concept and a request for resources, but no concrete plan.
It then came also to pass that it never came to a campus competition for the 3 MRI slots for November 2023, since all proposals that had gone forwarded the previous January were allowed to compete a second time. This is the reason why you did not hear from me late last year. I assure you, if I had led an MRI proposal, you would have heard from me through this channel. So, in this spirit, consider this the first communication for my suggestion to compete for the November 2024 NSF MRI. But that said, this meeting can and should really provide a broader forum for ideas and other channels how to continue funding HPCF for all of us users.
Closing
In summary, please come to the user meeting, if you can; please RSVP if able to plan ahead; feel free to include comments in your RSVP that I will collect; I will introduce the HPCF RAs at the meeting; I can share more details on last year; and we should discuss with those at the meeting what plan we all see going forward.
chair, HPCF Governance Committee