Biostat Cluster Grant Description

Computing

The department of Biostatistics at the University of Michigan provides researchers with high performance/high throughput computing services. The department owns and supports a Linux-based HPC cluster intended for application workloads that are not suitable for personal computers. The cluster has 928 cores and 6TB of memory across 45 compute nodes. All compute nodes are interconnected with 1GB Ethernet networking. Job scheduling on the cluster are managed through the Slurm workload manager.

Storage

The Biostat Cluster utilizes Turbo; a high-capacity, high-performance network storage solution that provides secure and reliable data storage to users across the University of Michigan. Home and software directories across all nodes are served via Turbo. The home directory is replicated off-site to ensure data integrity, site redundancy, and increased availability. It also has daily snapshots that allow for reverting to a previous point in time for any files or folders that have been modified or deleted. This services is managed and maintained by the Advanced Research Computing Team at the University of Michigan.

Inter-networking

The cluster is connected to the University of Michigan's campus backbone to provide access to student and researcher desktops as well as other campus computing and storage systems. The campus backbone provides 100 Gbps connectivity to the commodity Internet and the research networks Internet2 and MiLR.

Software

The cluster is running Rocky Linux and includes a software suite of commercial and open source research packages, including many of the common research-specific applications such as MATLAB, R and SAS.

Data Center Facilities

The cluster is housed in the Michigan Academic Computing Center (MACC). The MACC is an N+1 facility that is designed to ensure the safety and security of the data housed within. It has reliable and redundant infrastructure including uninterruptible power supplies, dual power paths, backup generators and backup cooling which protects equipment against power outages.

Support

Cluster support services are provided by the department of Biostatistics' Linux Systems Administrator.