Services We Provide
High Performance Computing
Our primary focus is providing High Performance Computing (HPC) solutions to support researchers across all disciplines at Iowa State University. The Nova HPC cluster provides access to some of the most advanced hardware and software available for exploring the biggest challenges in science, engineering, and technology. The Nova cluster also includes HPC Class, which is a set of resources on the Nova cluster that are reserved for classroom and educational users.
Large Scale Storage
We also manage the Large Scale Storage (LSS) system that provides high capacity file research storage at a relatively low cost.
Web Hosting
We support the web hosting needs for dozens of research groups.
Consulting
Talk to our technology experts about your research IT challenges. We are eager to help you find solutions that work for you. No problems too big or too small.
Getting Help
E-mail the Team
Send all research IT questions or problems to researchit@iastate.edu. It will be easier for us to respond to your request if you include details such as:
- If you are having a problem with a job, be sure to include the job numbers for any jobs that had problems.
- If you having problems with a batch job, include the path to where the batch script can be found.
Walk-in Support
New to cluster computing? Got problems getting your job to run? Just want to ask some questions in person? Research IT offers walk-in support in 0205 Durham on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, 2-5 pm. Other days/times may be requested via researchit@iastate.edu.
Strategy and Planning
Management, Support, & Facilities
The Chief Information Officer will be responsible for the general management of the HPC operation. This includes staff to assist with creating applications, staff access on a case-by-case basis, hosting of all nodes not maintained by a College or Center, coordinating of all utilities, financial administration, etc. The goal is for all to participate so that synergies can be uncovered and resources allocated in the most beneficial way.
Steering Committee
HPC Steering Committee consists of faculty that help ensure that Research IT remains focused on providing resources that will benefit research across the university.
Research Grant Assistance
Budget Information
For estimating purposes, please use the following information in the development of your proposal budget. The final cost to the grant award will be actual rather than estimated. Note: ISU research groups could share cost of nodes or storage.
Equipment
Compute Nodes
$22,000
Budget Justification
Dual 96 core AMD processors, 1.5 TB of shared memory, 1.6 TB of NVME 3DWPD SSD local disk space, Mellanox EDR (100 Gbit) Infiniband card/cable, and 1Gbit Ethernet & cable + 5 years parts warranty.
Storage
$39,000 (Per file system for 262 TB of disk space with local backup)
Budget Justification
Storage is purchased as a fileserver with redundant power supplies and 2 44 bay JBOD enclosure attached. Each enclosure has redundant fans, and power supplies, all of which are hot swappable. All disks are 12Gb/s 7200 RPM Enterprise SAS drives. The storage is configured so that yesterday's copy of the data is retained in case of filesystem corruption.
This provides a 262 TB zpool. The fileservers are connected via 100Gbit Infiniband to provide fast access to the data.
Preparing a Paper for Publication
If you are preparing a paper or publication that references research that used ISU HPC resources, add the following:
"The research reported in this paper is partially supported by the HPC@ISU equipment at Iowa State University, some of which has been purchased through funding provided by NSF under MRI grants number 1726447 and MRI2018594."