36th Annual Report (2023-24)

98 FACILITIES AT IUCAA The IUCAA Computing Facility offers state of the art computing hardware and technology rich environment 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 350+ servers and desktops, 100+ laptops, 80+ printers and scanners, three large High-Performance Computing systems and over 9.5 PiB of storage, in addition to diverse equipment deployed for an extensive, high throughput wired and wireless campus-wide network. The number of registered Wi-Fi devices are over 900 and e-mail accounts served by the computing facility are nearly 825. IUCAA provides e-mail services to its members and associates, the total number of accounts being nearly 825. IUCAA has its own registered domain name as “iucaa.in” , “associates.iucaa.in” , “ ligo-india.in” and “mailman.gw.iucaa.in” . The WAN services are provided by the National Knowledge Network over a 1 Gbps fibre connectivity, with a fall back arrangement over a 50Mbps line fromBSNL. The Pegasus cluster deployed in 2019 consists of two head nodes, four login nodes, two graphics nodes, four GPU nodes, 2560 compute cores, and 2PiB Parallel File System (PFS) storage. Several new users have been added in the last two years, and all users use the cluster extensively. The average cluster utilisation ismore than 90%, resulting in a considerable wait time for many jobs. To cater for the ever-increasing need of computational power for large-scale computational jobs and reduce the computational job's wait time, the Pegasus cluster will be augmented by ComputingFacility 1) ExpansionofthePegasuscluster In the year April 2023- March 2024 emphasis was given to implementationof: adding 20 compute nodes. IUCAA has a 40 KVA UPS dedicated to supporting the Rack LCPs, Chiller pumps, BMS utilities, Carel setup and power supply to the Utility room and data centre. Due to the increasing load, we needed a Higher-capacity modular UPS system. The old 40 KVA UPS has been replaced with a new 60 KVA UPS systemto support the expanding load. IUCAA has dedicated 200TB enterprise class storage for the virtualization infrastructure(VI) setup (Server Virtualisation and Virtual Desktop Infrastructure). This storage is more than nine years old and has reached the end of life and support with more than 80% of storage capacity utilised, affecting the storage performance. To enable the smooth functionality of the VI setup, better support and performance, the storage has been replaced with the new 200TB unified storage. e next phase of MALS observations focusing on the UHF band (remaining ~1100 hrs) was scheduled to start in 2023. To process MALS data, we have procured 4PB PFS storage (hot), 1PB (archival storage), and 1PB tape storage(cold). Till now, we have received about 150 tapes containing L band data. We expect 81 tapes containing UHF band data by next month and will receive around 250 in the near future. We have moved about 1PB of processed L band data to archival storage, and still, 1.5PB of the processed data is on PFS storage. Hence, the archival storage is expanded by an additional 1 PiB, so processed L-band data may be moved from the PFS storage to archival storage, enabling the processing of UHF datasets. 2) Replacement of 40KVA UPS system with60KVAmodularUPS 3) Installationof200TBUnifiedstorage 4) ExpansionofMALSarchival storage by 1PiB 5) Network monitoring and Analysis Softwaresetup IUCAA has an extensive network (wired LANS and W-LAN). As the number of u s e r s i nc r e a s e s , t he ne t wo r k complexity increases, and keeping the network system secure and running is paramount. A new network monitoring and management software, has been procured that helps in monitoring, manage, and providing ease of maintenance, reducing significant network issues and to ensure the utmost uptime. IUCAA hosts Zimbra email services on the two dedicated servers with the warranty is about to expiring. Two new servers have been procured to ensure uninterruptedmail services. 6) Replacement of existingEmail Servers hardware 7) Renewal of Astronomical software services. Work done by personnel at the Computing Facility IUCAA associates, Scientists at IUCAA carry out research in a wide range of Astronomy and Astrophysics, such as Classical and quantum gravity, Cosmic magnetic f i e l ds , cosmo l ogy , l a r ge-sca l e structure, Galactic and extragalactic astronomy, Gravitational waves, High energy astrophysics, Instrumentation f o r a s t r o n omy , Ob s e r v a t i o n a l Astronomy (Optical, UV, X-ray, and Radio), Quantum metrology for precisionmeasurements, Solar Physics, and many more. Many of these fields require high-level data visualizations out of complex numerical data. To help create such meaningful visualizations, IUCAA procured the licenses for Mathematica, Matlab, and IDL software services. The Computer Centre continues to provide technical support to project students as well as visitors from universities and institutionswithin India and abroad. The Computing facility employs 10 personnel, who carry out the daily functions that include: 1. Architecting overall IT solution /