ARCCA Supercomputer

Descriptions

Cardiff University is seeking to purchase a replacement/refresh for the current supercomputer and associated storage installed in 2008. The current solution is a central facility which supports the diverse computational research requirements across 19 of the Departments/Schools within the University – from traditional STEM through to Medical and Social Science disciplines – with over 100 active projects and 350 registered users. Due to the range and variety of research, usage comprises serial batch jobs through to large tightly coupled calculations requiring 512+ cores. Usage reports are available on request. The current solution is a 2048 core Intel Harpertown Linux RHEL cluster, with ca. 70TB NFS /home partition, ca. 35TB usable /lustre parallel file system using PBS Pro job schedule. The procurement will seek to migrate the active user community and data onto the new system.Note: Due to datacentre design, the solution must be installed in APC Netshelter Hot Aisle Containment cubes (already installed in the datacentre) – a mix of 600m and 750mm racks – site visits will be facilitated on request. With an established user community, the remit for ARCCA (Advanced Research Computing @ Cardiff) will be to engage with less traditional computational research groups to help assist with developing and delivering their research objectives. The solution proposed should highlight any opportunities where this objective will be supported.3 years maintenance and Support must be included as part of the solution – with the pricing for extending this to a 4th year. In addition to the centralised supercomputer refresh, there is a second component which is subject to confirmation of funding from Wellcome Trust. This comprises an optional second component to the tender for Cardiff University Brain Imaging Centre (CUBRIC) – Psychology Department – which is to replace their current imaging processing cluster. Full details are provided in the tender document, but providing competitive quotations for both systems is preferred.Suppliers must register and express an interest in the project on the following website:https://in-tendhost.co.uk/cardiffuniversity/