In September 2019, we launched our BEAR Champion scheme to help spread the word about BEAR services, and since then the team has expanded to 20 over all 5 colleges – see our list of BEAR Champions. In the last year, we have welcomed 6 new BEAR Champions: Dr Jack Sullivan from the Institute of … Continue reading “BEAR Champion team news”
Category: data centre
Digital Research Conversations – Sustainable Computing
In our 9th Digital Research Conversation, held on the 13th December 2023, researchers and Advanced Research Computing staff gave us an insight into how and why sustainable research computing should be on everybody’s agenda. Kirsty McCready, our Research Engagement and Data Group Intern, led the event and provides a summary below. There is no question … Continue reading “Digital Research Conversations – Sustainable Computing”
Extended BEAR outage in April
Update 29/03/2023 Our contractors and Estates have confirmed the dates for the BEAR services shutdown, this will be from 9am on Friday 21st April until Tuesday 25th April at 5pm. We are expecting to restore access to the Research Data Store and Virtual Machines (which run bear-hosted websites) on Monday 24th April but compute services, such as BlueBEAR and Baskerville, … Continue reading “Extended BEAR outage in April”
BEAR: Maintaining Services when it’s 38C + Outside
If you are reading this, you probably know that we did not…. as we could not…. in the face of sustained temperatures beyond the design specification of the Research Data Centre. As with all engineering, there are safe operational limits and decisions are made about the conditions in which the system will operate. Similarly, air … Continue reading “BEAR: Maintaining Services when it’s 38C + Outside”
BEAR Challenge 2022
Update 15/03/24: BEAR Challenge 2024 – registration open! If you are interested in joining BEAR Challenge 2024 and are either an undergraduate or masters student, from any discipline, please see our Eventbrite registration page for details. —- After a two year hiatus, the BEAR Challenge is back! The popular three day event was held on … Continue reading “BEAR Challenge 2022”
How Green is the BEAR? Sustainable Supercomputing
Last week we attended the University’s Sustainability Town Hall where we could be found on the IT Services stand, discussing our response to the challenge of delivering sustainable supercomputing. On our agenda for more than a decade, the major breakthrough for BEAR came with the adoption of direct liquid cooling in 2015. Read on to … Continue reading “How Green is the BEAR? Sustainable Supercomputing”
The Launch of Baskerville – a Tier 2 HPC system
On the 14th of September, 2021, we were excited to welcome visitors to the University from across the country to the official launch of our Baskerville Tier 2 HPC system, expected to rank in the Top 200 of HPC systems in the world. Invited attendees included our technology partners in the project – OCF, Lenovo, … Continue reading “The Launch of Baskerville – a Tier 2 HPC system”
The launch of our new Research Data Centre
On 21st June 2018, the Advanced Research Computing (ARC) team celebrated the launch of our new Research Data Centre. As the first purpose built, water-cooled, research focussed UK Data Centre, Data Centre Managers and architects of HPC systems were keen to attend and find out more about this ambitious project. The day had a technical … Continue reading “The launch of our new Research Data Centre”
***Extended Service Impacts for BEAR*** ****May 17th to May 26th 2018****
Latest News – Summary of BEAR Services affected BlueBEAR HPC : Reduced service BEAR Cloud ( VM ) : No service CaStLeS compute ( VM and Batch) : No service with a few minor exceptions (In each case, the PI owner has been informed). The good news is that All CaStLeS data will remain available … Continue reading “***Extended Service Impacts for BEAR*** ****May 17th to May 26th 2018****”
Lights Go On in the New Research Data Centre
With enormous thanks to our Estates project manager, we can confirm that the lights have gone on in the new Research Data Centre. This means ‘all systems are go’ for the BEAR migration 17th to 26th May as previously announced. See the service impacts summary published on 8th March ‘Important! Extended Service Impacts for BEAR … Continue reading “Lights Go On in the New Research Data Centre”