TheUniversityofTexasSystemofacademicandhealthinstitutions isoneofthepremieropenscienceresearch organizationsintheworld.ItsnineacademicinstitutionsincludetheflagshipUTAustincampusandanumberof growing,andpotentially R1-class,universities.Itssixhealthinstitutionspossessnationalreputations earnedfor leadership inareasof biomedical researchrangingfrom cancertoinfectious diseases.Thecollectiveresearch expendituresoftheUTSysteminstitutions exceedtwobilliondollarsperyear,withsignificantfundingfromevery majorfederalfundingagencyincludingNIHandNSF.
UT System is committed tothepreservationandgrowthofresearchleadershipatits institutions,andits labsdependon havingbetter accessto powerful, comprehensiveIT resources.The advancement of scientific researchis increasinglyenabled throughthe useof computing technologies,rangingin typeandscalefromlaptopsand desktopstosupercomputersandclouds,includingstorage,visualization technologies,networks,andscientificsoftware. In the pastdecade,the explosionof digital dataproduced bymore powerful computersandbyincreasingly powerful scientificinstruments,suchashigh-speedvideomicroscopes,sensornetworks,DNAsequencers,andMRI systems, has driven a corresponding explosion in informatics and analytics-based computational research. Biologicalandbiomedicalresearchinparticularhasbenefited from this proliferationof data,more powerful computing andlargerstoragesystems,andthe development of newtechniquesandsoftware for data-driven computationalresearch.
UTSysteminstitutions havesignificantadvantagesinthishighlycompetitive researchenvironment: UTSystem'ssupport for research infrastructure presentsahugeadvantageto the fifteen Systeminstitutions; theTexasAdvancedComputingCenter(TACC)atUTAustinisan internationaladvancedcomputingcenterthatprovides a competitive advantageforallUTSysteminstitutions;andadesiretocollaborateamongthese15institutions leveragestheirresearch,financial,and technicalresourcestomaximizeavailablefundingandcontinue to developascientificallypowerful researchITinfrastructure thatbenefitsallUTinstitutions.
The University of Texas Research Cyberinfrastructure (UTRC) project originated as a strategic investment on the part of the UT System Board of Regents to support high performance computing (HPC), to enhance network throughput, and to provide data storage that will advance biomedical research across the institutions of the System. In November 2010, the Board of Regents approved $23 million for the UTRC. Specifically, monies were invested to:
1.Increase the speed of inter-campus networking to 10Gbps – This will result in very high bandwidth throughput from the researchers’ workstations and servers to the TACC HPC resources and to the UTRC storage systems as well as to research colleagues around the world. The UTRC network is a dedicated 10Gigabits using Juniper carrier class MX routers from MX80s to MX960s with dedicated Modular Port Concentrators and minimum 80Gigabits of capacity in the Switch Control Boards and Routing Engines. The core MX960s are completely non-blocking to all traffic streams. The Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) network fabric supports traffic engineeredIPv4 and IPv6 datagrams and layer 2 Ethernet traffic. The last mile metro topology is built with minimum of 40 50Gigahertz waves on 100Gigahertz spacing in Dense Wave Division Multiplex (DWDM) optically protected transports with Forward Error Correction to elevate the reliability.
2.Provide additional high performance computing capacity and staffing support - TACC's "Lonestar" Dell Linux Cluster is a powerful, multi-use HPC and remote visualization resource withatheoretical peak performance of 309 TFLOPS and a total memory of 45TB. It contains23,232 cores within 1,936 Dell PowerEdgeM610 compute blades (nodes), 24 PowerEdge R610 compute-I/O server-nodes, and two PowerEdge R710 login nodes. The system storage includes a 2.4PB parallel Lustre file system, and 276TB of local compute-node disk space. Lonestar also provides access to 14 large memory (1TB) nodes, and 16 nodes containing two NVIDIA GPU's, giving users access to high-throughput computing and remote visualization capabilities respectively.
3.Create shared research data storage for UT System Principle Investigators - The UT Research Data Repository, known as "Corral", consists of two 5PB installations, with geographical replication of data to data centers located in Austin and Arlington. Each installation consists of 2 Data Direct SFA10000K Storage controllers, 1800 3TB SATA hard drives, and 300 600GB SAS hard drives, connected via QDR Infiniband to 8 Dell R710 Servers, each of which is connected to upstream networks via 10 Gigabit Ethernet.Corral provides a variety of data storage, access and management mechanisms including integration with high-performance computation, metadata creation and search, and web-based access for data sharing. With a peak I/O capability of 20 Gigabytes per second and multiple 10Gb connections into the main installation in Austin, it is capable of simultaneously providing high-performance access to a large number of users across UT System, within the Texas Advanced Computing Center, and via external networks including Internet2.
In addition, UT System anticipates providing increasing investments to the Research Cyberinfrastructure over the next 1-2years.