34th Annual Report (2021-22)

119 FACILITIES AT IUCAA ComputingFacility 1) Archival storage for MALS: The IUCAA Computing Facility continues to offer state of the art computing hardware and technology rich mobile work space for IUCAA members, associates and visitors. It also extends an array of specialized High Performance Computing (HPC) environments to the academic community for their research. The hardware and devices currently managed by the computing facility include about 340+ servers and desktops, 100+ laptops, 45+ printers and scanners, three large High Performance Computing Clusters and over 8 Pebibyte (PiB) of storage, in addition to diverse equipment deployed for an extensive, high throughput wired and wireless campus-wide network. The number of registered WiFi devices is over 900 and e-mail accounts served by the computing facility amount to nearly 700. IUCAA provides e-mail services to its members and associates, the total number of accounts being nearly 700. IUCAA has its own registered domain name as “ iucaa.in” . The WAN services are provided by the National Knowledge Network on a 1 Gbps fibre connectivity, with a fall back arrangement on a 50 Mbps line from TATA VSNL. In the year April 2021- March 2022 emphasiswasgiventoimplementationof: The Meerkat Absorption Line Survey (MALS), led by IUCAA scientists, is one of the ten extensive surveys being carried out with the MeerKAT telescope in South Africa. The data will be transferred from South Africa to IUCAA through tapes (LTO7 or better) and will be processed IUCAA by MALS team. The data for MALS is segregated on three storages, hot (fast), warm (intermediate) and cold (slow). The warm storage acts as an archival storage. We have procured and installed 1PiBarchival storage for MALS. 2) Wired LAN connectivity in Housing colony 3) Procurement of 500 compute cores for High Performance Computing Cluster(Pegasus): 4) SupportforOnlineINATexam 5) ProvisioningWired andWi-FI Network infrastructure During the lockdown period, most of the students, staff and faculty in the housing colony have been working from home. In order to facilitate this, we have enhanced the coverage of wired LAN connectivity in the housing colony. In this project, we provided LAN connectivity to Type-II and Type-III quarters. The Pegasus cluster deployed in 2019 consist of two login nodes, two graphics nodes, 1920 compute cores, 2PiB PFS storage. In the last two years, several new users have been added and all users are extensively using the cluster. Currently, the average cluster utilisation is more than 90%, resulting in a considerable wait time for many jobs. After looking at the usage trend, the computer users committee approved expansion of the Pegasus cluster by adding 500 compute cores. The procurement of the compute cores is in process. Due to the pandemic situation, the INAT exam was conducted online through M/s CondeTantra. CodeTrantra uses third-eye technology to monitor all candidates and records the activity of candidates. We have provided support in the procurement of the online examination software and provided required software environment to transfer essential data from CodeTanra to IUCAA. Considering pandemic situation stable wired and Wi-fi connectivity was must and on priority provisioning of fibre connectivity along with Network infrastructure is successfully carried out for Type II ,Type III quarters, TLC Building, PKC office inSPPUCampus. IUCAA currently have SonicWall NSA 4600 UTM firewall configured in High Availability with perpetual VPN license for both IUCAA and LIGO networks. It is . Considering growing network requirements and security threats, upgradation of existing firewall with a latest generation firewall with a buy back option of existing one is explored, procured and installed successfully. In order to facilitate work from home, to increase the WiFi coverage and to improve the stability of connectivity in IUCAA premises, we have installed ruckus R720 (Qty - 7), ruckus H320 (Qty - 10) indoor wireless access point, and ruckus T610 (Qty - 7) outdoor wireless access point and also relocated existing access points for better coverage. HP lasejet Colour M775 printer (Qty. 1), HP All in one Desktop (Qty 30), HP Laptop (Qty. 12), and MacBook Pro (Qty. 5) were acquired for the academic community, visitors and administrative officers. IUCAA associates, 6) Upgradationofexistingfirewall: The Computing Facility employs 8 personnel, who carry out the daily functionsthatinclude: responsible for security of entire campus network The Computer Centre continues to provide technical support to project students as well as visitors from universities and institutionswithin India and abroad. 1. Architecting overall IT solution / technologies required for IUCAA and present it to Computer Users' Committee for their consensus. 2. Framing policy documents and finalizing them in consultation with the Computer Users' committeemembers.