Summary

Resources per team: Virtual Machines (VMs) assigned per team.

Resource Access:  SSH + remote desktop (like VNC). VPN is not required

Data cube access:  Read-only access to shared folder (like NFS)

Resource management: Each VM provides an isolated environment per team. 

Software management: The participants will have sudo access to their VM, so they will be allowed to install the software and/or the containersation environment they need.

Documentation: Soon available

Support: Enquiries may be sent to ska-itsupport@iaa.csic.es. Participants may also join our Slack workspace by emailing  ska-itsupport@iaa.csic.es and request to be added.

Resource location: Spain

Technical specifications

Overview

At the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (CSIC) in Granada (Spain), we are leading the Spanish effort to host an SRC. We are currently developing an SRC prototype aiming both to support users working with SKA precursors and pathfinders, and constituting a transversal, wavelength agnostic facility enabling knowledge exchange among a diverse community of users. We have recently deployed the first stage of the hardware, based on a cloud environment to be able to provide interoperable and flexible services. We are particularly engaged in the challenge of handling SKA data to extract scientific knowledge following the Open Science values, and for this reason, we are identifying and integrating in the prototype platform tools and services able to enhance knowledge sharing and collaboration as well as to ensure transparency, as key factors to achieve scientific reproducibility (i.e. a JupyterHub server, container engines or  Virtual Observatory services). 

You can see more details of the IAA-CSIC SRC prototype  in: http://amiga.iaa.es/data/shared_anonym/P2-259.pdf

Technical specifications

The OpenStack cloud gathers 200 CPUs cores and 2.5 TB of memory across five compute hypervisors, plus 600+ TB of usable storage capacity managed by Ceph. The servers are interconnected in a 100Gbps network and the cluster is connected to RedIRIS (the Spanish National Research Network ) with a 10Gbps link.

Per user resource

Teams will be provided with a VM with one of these two flavors depending on the numbers of teams allocated:

Software installed

We provide the following base images for virtual machines:

Teams will have sudo access, so users will be able to install their own software

Volume of resource

As long a VM is assigned to each group, there is no limitation of users per group. Users' accounts will be managed by the team itself.

After the HI Challenge deadline, the VMs assigned to teams will remain active for 2 additional months, so they can run some final checks, collect their data and tools, etc. If more time is needed we could arrange it.

GPUs if any

No GPU resources

User access

Logging in

Users will be provided with an IP address and two port numbers: 1) one port for SSH access, and 2) another port for access with a remote desktop application.

How to run a workflow

Sudo access to the VM will ensure that the users can install and configure their own environment to deploy their preferred workflow management system.

Accessing the data cube

The data cube will be accessible via a mounted shared and read-only folder into the virtual machine.

Software management

Sudo access to the VM will allow the end user install their own software.

Containerisation

The VM will come with podman pre-installed, which is a secure replacement for docker. Users will also be able to install singularity if they prefer so.

Documentation

User documentation can be soon available

Resource management

Separate VMs per team will isolate the team environments. The VM flavor will be fixed for the duration of the project and will thus limit/cap usage.

Support

Users can request support via email at ska-itsupport@iaa.csic.es

Participants can join our Slack workspace by emailing  ska-itsupport@iaa.csic.es and request to be added.


Credits and acknowledgements 

You can acknowledge the use of the IAA-CSIC SRC prototype resources in this way:

This work used the SKA Regional Centre Prototype at IAA-CSIC, which is funded by the State Agency for Research of the Spanish MCIU through the "Center of Excellence Severo Ochoa" award to the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (SEV-2017-0709), the European Regional Development Funds (EQC2019-005707-P), by the Junta de Andalucía (SOMM17_5208_IAA), project RTI2018-096228-B-C31(MCIU/AEI/FEDER,UE) and PTA2018-015980-I