Purchase of Equipment and adding it to the Cluster

We encourage researchers to write grants to purchase nodes (or other appropriate  hardware)  that can be added to the  cluster.  Buying equipment and adding it to the Cluster gives researchers access to a larger system than they could buy independently,  counts as part of Boston College's match to the grant, and removes system administration responsibilities from researchers allowing them to focus on their work.    It also gives the entire Boston College community access  to a larger resource. 

We have some general guidelines for adding equipment to the Cluster.  We hope these are common sense guidelines. 

• The equipment must be relatively new and similar to, and compatible with, existing
  equipment.  We will work with researchers on specifications.  These specifications
  may include disk, in addition to nodes.
• The equipment will be integrated into the cluster and managed for 3 years.  After 2.5
  years, we will review the equipment to determine if it is still current, usable and
  manageable in the cluster to determine if it still should be part of the cluster after the
  end of the three years.
• The researcher's group will get the equivalent of these resources on the entire
  cluster, and will have access to all nodes on the cluster.  This permits the research
  group to run more jobs than they could on their nodes alone, and gives general users
  access to a larger cluster. We will configure the queues so that the jobs of the
  researcher's group gets top priority until the equivalent of the number of nodes
  purchased is exceeded.
•  To accommodate deadlines, and special requests, we will dedicate the equivalent
  number of nodes to the research group; however, we need advanced notice, as it will
  take time to clear running jobs.

Please contact Barry Schaudt (617-552-0242, schaudt@bc.edu) for assistance in incorporating technology into your grants.