October 2024 - Physics-Departmental-Computing

Date for Departmental Computing Meeting
by David Colling 31 Oct '24

31 Oct '24

Dear All, Tuesday next week is the clear winner (sorry Brian). I have booked 532 and there will be a teams room. Please send items for the agenda. Best, david

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Cyber security and (loss of) VPN access
by David Colling 30 Oct '24

30 Oct '24

Dear All, As you may well be aware, the College is tightening up on all aspects of our cyber security. One, very significant, aspect of this is the use of the current legacy VPNs (of which we have several). For some time ICT has been working to replace the use of VPNs with Zscaler to access university resources when not connected to the Imperial network. This is because VPNs pose a significant security risk to the College as they bypass Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA). For this reason, the College, will turn off the legacy VPNs as soon as is practical - no time scale has been set for this yet but the expectation is that it will be around the end of the year. It is possible that Zscalar will not satisfy everybody's needs, in which case a new VPN with MFA will be introduced to replace the legacy VPNs. ICT is currently surveying the College's VPN users to see if they have needs that are not satisfied by Zscalar and if so what those needs are. It is only in this way that ICT can ensure that any VPN solution that they bring in, alongside Zscalar, will satisfy everybody. This is being carried out systematically, with non-faculty people and FoM having been surveyed so far. It is now the turn of FoNS. VPN users who do not respond to the survey will loose access to the VPNs. Physics has more than 240 people who are currently active users of one of the legacy VPNs. These are people who have used a VPN recently. These people will be contacted directly by ICT, however there may be many more who only use one of the VPNs occasionally, but nevertheless rely on it when they do use it. If you are one of these people, and you think that Zscalar will not work for you, please contact one of your community representatives on the Departmental Computing Committee. If you do not fill in the appropriate form you will loose access. Best, david

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Draft email to distribute regarding HX2 and future needs
by David Colling 30 Oct '24

30 Oct '24

Hi All, I promised both the Physics Computing Committee and the FRCC that I would send around and email for people to circulate to aquire information about HX2 and other future needs. I started and then thought that it might be more fruitful to circulate a draft first and then refine it slightly. So below is a (fairly rough) draft for comment. Comments are very welcome. Best, david Sub: Input into future research computing needs Dear All, As you may know the College's HPC platform has been upgraded with HX1 coming online earlier this year. HX1 is a cluster of over 18k cores (Intel Xeon Platinum 8358) and 60 GPUs (Nvidia A100s). This year the focus is on the update of the data storage with a move away from the current RDS to a more structured Research Data Facility (RDF). The RDF will be coming online later this year. We are now looking for input as to what will be needed both next year and further into the future on a 3 to 5 year time scale. Next year the plan is to decommission the College's main High Throughput Cluster (HTC) CX3 and replace with a new system. The budget available for this purchase will be approximately £5M. Because this will be our first fully watercolled system, we are negotiating space in a new data centre with this capability and so this resource will not come online until the summer of 2025. We are seeking your input as to what we should purchase. As this is replacing an HTC system it is assumed that the majority of the money will be spent on another HTC system, however, if your research has need for other shapes of resources then please let us know. Also even if what you want is an HTC resources what parameters are important to you (e.g. memory/core, access to GPUs, throughput from disk, etc etc). *** Different for different departments - this is the physics example *** Please give us feedback via your representatives on the Departmental Computing Committee. We are also trying to establish what the more medium term computing needs will be. So please can you also discuss these with your representatives on the Departmental Computing Committee. These may be expected needs from from specific instruments/experiments/projects of general growth in computing needs. We will then try to amalgamate these into a coherent input for future purchses. Best, david

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Legacy VPN users
by David Colling 29 Oct '24

29 Oct '24

Hi All, The College is going to turn off the legacy VPNs because they don't have MFA. This is very sensible. All "active" (meaning in the last couple of months) users will be contacted directly however, there may well be users who don't use a VPN often but do rely on it when they do use them. I am writing to the staff lists asking such people to contact you for further information. Attached is the text of the email that is being sent to the active users which has the appropriate links in it. Thanks for your help on this. Best, david

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Short Notice Doodle poll - Physics Computing Meeting
by David Colling 29 Oct '24

29 Oct '24

Dear All, First let me apologise for the short notice - I have a lot of teaching at the moment and this rather snuck up on me. There is a FoNS Computing meeting coming a week tomorrow and, as you know, I like our Physics meeting to be in the week leading up to this meeting so that things can be carried across if needed. I have created the usual doodle poll at: https://doodle.com/meeting/participate/id/ep70gzQd I would rather not do Monday as I have a clashing meeting but if that is the only day that works for others then I shall move that meeting. I have a number of things that I would like to discuss - high on the list is cyber security. Please send your suggestions. There is an action on me to produce a 2-pager on the meeting that we had about RSE support in the Department. If the meeting is next week then I will produce this before the meeting. Otherwise it will be after the meeting and circulated to you before the FoNS meetinhg. I have cc'ed Alan Heavens and Daniel Waldram as both Tim and Andrew are on sabbatical and so we need two replacements (I think that Alan said that one would be Jonathan but I want to be sure before inviting him). Please fill in this poll at your earliest convenience. I suspect that Tomorrow is way too short notice but kept it in there anyway - just in case everything worked out for tomorrow by some fluke. Best, david

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Fwd: Research Computing Services HX2 Survey
by David Colling 09 Oct '24

09 Oct '24

Dear Physics Computing Committee and Physics Research Committee, Below is an email from Emily who does comms for the Research Computing Service (RCS) regarding a survey that the RCS has put together. I was going to write my own version but I think that Emily covers everything that I want to say. This survey is important! Please can I ask you to distribute this through to the relevant people in your communities and research groups. If people are unhappy doing this then I can send it to the staff list, but I thought that this might be more targeted. This survey has two purposes. The first is to gather requirements for the next large RCS compute facility - to be called HX2 (pronounced Hex 2). Depending on what UMB decide in November, this will either be a £5M or £10M resource. It will provide the bulk of the College's High Throughput Computing for the next ~5 years (traditional HPC resource being provided by HX1). This is our chance to provide input and to make sure that what is bought is what we need. As a member of the RCS Academic Leadership Team, I will get see the survey results and will be able to emphasise certain aspects of your replies if that is needed. The second purpose is to gather future requirements and directions, so even if people don't use the RCS, but are (heavy) computer users then please encourage them to fill in the survey to that the RCS can evolve to better suite your needs. If you have any questions then please feel free to ask either me or Emily (or perhaps both of us). Best, david -------- Forwarded Message -------- Subject: Research Computing Services HX2 Survey Date: Mon, 7 Oct 2024 12:22:59 +0000 From: Lumley, Emily K <e.lumley(a)imperial.ac.uk> To: RCS Communications Team <rcs-comms-team(a)imperial.ac.uk> CC: Lumley, Emily K <e.lumley(a)imperial.ac.uk> Dear all, Research Computing Services are planning for the next deployment of HEX (HX2) in summer 2025. This new computing service, like the current HX1, will be a standalone system with dedicated local storage. Utilising next generation liquid cooling, HX2 will replace the older CX1 and some CX3 services which have traditionally focused on supporting high-throughput workloads. RCS is currently working on design options for the new HX2 system, and we have developed a survey to help gather input from the Imperial community so that HX2’s design is based on requirements defined by our research communities: their present needs as well as anticipating future needs. The survey will also help to shape future requests for central investment as well as models for research group investment to support the growth of central RCS services. We appreciate your time and input on this survey and all feedback is valuable. *Please follow this link to the survey <https://imperial.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_eLtePVCEekLAfKS>* ** If you have any questions or concerns, please contact me. All the best, Emily *Dr Emily Lumley (she/her)* Research Engagement Lead Research Computing Services | Information Communication Technologies| Imperial College London LinkedIn <https://www.linkedin.com/in/emily-lumley-8757b367/> | e.lumley(a)imperial.ac.uk <mailto:e.lumley@imperial.ac.uk> | --

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