Webinar 2017 Navigating the Research Computing Resource Renewals Coming in 2017

Funding provided by the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) Cyberinfrastructure Initiative (CI) has made possible a substantial research computing resource renewal. By the end of 2017 it is expected that many of the current CFI funded research compute systems among Canada’s regional HPC consortia (AceNet, Compute Quebec, Compute Ontario [CAC, SciNet, SHARCNet] and WestGrid) will be replaced with four new national systems in collaboration with the Compute Canada national partner. During this refresh implementation efforts will be made to consolidate resources and centralize services where this has potential for increasing research throughput. Some aspects of the resource renewal will make migration of researchers onto the new systems more complicated than the typical moving among legacy systems within one of the regional consortia. This webinar presents topics that will be useful for researchers while navigating the 2017 CFI CI renewal implementation. Topics that will be covered include 1- an overview of the new hardware coming online in 2017 (including the tentative availability schedule), 2- overview of the SHARCNET legacy system defunding schedule, 3- support and communication avenues relevant for research migration 4- summary of relevant sources of documentation, 5- specific differences between current SHARCNET usage and the four new national systems. Researchers are encouraged to participant in a general discussion following the presentation. The presentation will be delivered by James Desjardins (SHARCNET HPC Consultant and member of the Compute Canada Migration Team) and John Morton (SHARCNET Technical Manager) will be in attendance to discuss details of new Canadian research computing landscape taking shape during 2017.