Over the last month, the team and I have been working on numerous projects.
Earlier this month we received the final copy of the Video for the UCISA conference, the team were very impressed with the final video, and feel it gives a great overview of Viper. The video is available on YouTube:
The team have been working on creating a Viper Wiki to help users working on HPC, although not finished we have received great feedback from users who are finding the wiki incredibly useful as a guide to getting started to working with different applications on Viper. The team plan to expand the Wiki overtime with extra content on applications and guides for new users. Currently, I am creating new articles and prototype videos to help users on items such as ‘getting connected’.
I have also started work on my Intern Project, to produce a proof of concept for a backup system for Viper. My project proposes an innovative solution to the backup issue by creating a Ceph distributed storage area for Viper research data backups by installing additional hard drives into compute nodes. This solution would allow automated backup of Viper storage over Viper’s internal network to compute nodes. My work has involved production of a project-plan and a mock-up cluster in virtual machines to test the concept. Already the project has allowed me to learn about Ceph and further my knowledge on HPC and Linux in general.
The team have also been planning for the Hull Science Festival; the festival takes place on the 2nd April at the University and provides a fantastic opportunity to outreach to the wider community. The Viper team will be present in the Discovery Zone displaying the ground-breaking research performed on Viper; we will be showcasing how Viper allows for faster research through parallel computing, with demonstrations on the significant amount of time saved, with help from some Raspberry Pi’s! We hope you have your ticket and find time to come along and meet us.