Biostatistics Cluster Description for Grant Writers

Computing

The department of Biostatistics at the University of Michigan provides researchers with high performance/high throughput computing services. The department owns and supports an HPC Linux-based cluster intended to support application workloads that are not suitable for personal computers. The cluster has 1092 cores and 6TB of memory across 58 compute nodes. All compute nodes are interconnected with 1GB ethernet networking. Computing jobs on the cluster are managed through the Slurm workload manager.

Storage

The system includes a 12TB networked file system. This file system allows researchers to store data on a short-term basis to perform calculations; it is not for long-term data storage or archival purposes.

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 includes a software suite of commercial and open source research packages; including many of the common research-specific applications such as Matlab and R.

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.

Hardware Grants

The Biostatistics department allows researchers to add their own compute hardware to the department cluster in order to take advantage of the data center, support, networking, storage, and basic software. For more details see Hardware Contribution.

Cost

Unlimited CPU hour accounts on the cluster may be purchased for $1000 per user and are good for one year. Free accounts are also available which provide 5000 CPU hours each semester.

Support

Cluster support services are provided through the department of Biostatistics.