Proposal Boilerplate

The UC San Diego data communications network is a flexible high-speed system with a redundant backbone of 100, 40 and 10 Gbps links connecting more than 200 building entry switches, 1800 edge switches and 65,000 end ports. All desktop ports are 1 Gbps capable, with 10Gbps connections and higher available to research applications on request. The UC San Diego network is IPv6-enabled at the core and building entry level making IPv6 available on request to individual VLANs; most network services and wireless connections provide default IPv6 connectivity.

The campus also has more than 11,000 access points providing ubiquitous 802.11ax wireless service secured with WPA2-Enterprise using enterprise 802.1x for access control; UCSD provides eduroam service to campus visitors and its own travelers. 

As a founding participant in the Corporation for Education Networking in California (CENIC), UC San Diego is redundantly connected to the California Research and Education network (CalREN) 400+ Gbps backbone via multiple 100 Gbps connections, providing the campus with at least 100 Gbps of connectivity to Internet2 and other research networks as well as at least 100 Gbps connectivity to the commodity Internet and major cloud providers. In addition, UC San Diego researchers are able to make use of layer-2, multi-100 Gbps national and international connectivity through the CENIC supported PacificWave regional network, Internet2 and ESnet research networks and the ANI joint 100G national backbone.

The Office of Information Assurance (OIA), as part of the central Information Technology Services (ITS) department, is dedicated to providing the leadership to protect UC San Diego information assets. Charged with the secure handling, availability, and confidentiality of all forms of information, OIA focuses on people, technology, and processes to reduce the risk of theft or damage to University data, while protecting privacy and maintaining the open collaborative environment that is hallmark to research institutions. The campus takes a risked-based approach to information security based on the ISO27001 framed InfoSec Policy (IS-3) and evaluates performance through recurring audits, pen tests, and regular assessments against the NIST CSF framework OIA upholds applicable state and federal laws and regulations and University policies.  Further, OIA ensures physical security of data and telecommunication centers, regulates authorized access, and provides awareness training. Identity and access management, risk assessment, network and endpoint security, and incident response are at the core of services OIA provides to the campus community.

Colocation services provided by the San Diego Supercomputer Center are designed to be a cost-effective hosting solution for researcher purchased computer and storage equipment leveraging historical UC investments and economies-of-scale. The environmentally controlled data centers span 19,000 square feet and have a total power capacity of 13 Megawatts. Interior and exterior security systems include two-factor authentication to both the host building and data centers as well as a 120-camera digital security system. Operations staff is available 24/7/365 to provide remote hands assistance, monitor critical and customer systems, facility oversight, and quick response to any data center event. Emergency power systems, Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) and diesel generation are both available on-site for research with uptime requirements or to maintain production environments. Seismic isolation systems rated for earthquakes of 7.0 or higher magnitude are installed on every rack to further protect equipment and data. The colocation facility is strategically positioned on the UC San Diego network to maximize diverse and robust connections to many research networks in addition to the commodity Internet.

The TSCC is a medium-scale, high performance, parallel computing cluster using the latest processor and interconnect (networking) technologies. Currently offered configurations comprise nodes with the latest generation Intel server class processors (Xeon) with 28 computing cores and 128 gigabytes of main memory. Two interconnect technologies are available: Infiniband for low latency parallel computing and 10 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) as a more cost-effective alternative for computing workloads less sensitive to latency. Computing nodes with Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) accelerators are also available. A wide suite of research software is offered; researchers may also install and run software tools of their choosing. All researchers using TSCC have access to a high capacity parallel file system and external, high bandwidth research networks such as CENIC and Internet2. Vendor contracts are negotiated to provide for annual technology insertion as newer processors and other components become available at competitive prices.

TSCC is operated under a hybrid business model, which includes researcher-contributed (condo) computing nodes and pre-purchased computing time on a shared (hotel) portion of the system.

In the condo portion of the system, researchers purchase computing nodes using funds from grants or other sources and contribute the nodes to the cluster. In exchange for an annual operating fee, the researcher-owned nodes are located in an energy-efficient data center at the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) and maintained by professional system administrators. Researchers may compute exclusively on a number of nodes equal to that purchased, or may use the entire cluster as a shared resource.