Research IT

CSF3 is coming...

The CSF (Computational Shared Facility) and DPSF (Data Processing Shared Facility), the University's flagship HPC systems for compute and high memory work, have been steadily growing over the past 7 years. Approximately 4 million pounds have been invested resulting in over 10,000 CPU cores, over 1PB of scratch and 60TB of RAM being available.

To allow for essential operating system upgrades, to enable future investments/expansion and to streamline support of these systems we will be merging the CSF and DPSF in to one large system - the CSF3. Combining the two systems will simplify the user experience and more high memory nodes will be available to everyone.

Unfortunately this will mean some disruption to the service, through a combination of short-term removal of some compute nodes and a small number of complete shut-downs of both systems. We apologise for any inconvenience this causes, but do believe the benefits will be worth it.

The first maintenance session will be on Wednesday 7th February. All information in relation to the upgrade, including planned maintenance, will be posted on the CSF3 web page as well as our Twitter feed. If you have any questions about the CSF3 or the upcoming maintenance then please email us.