Category:BwUniCluster 2.0

Close-up of bwUniCluster © KIT (Simon Raffeiner/SCC)

On 17.03.2020, the Steinbuch Centre for Computing (SCC) at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) commissioned a new parallel computer system called "bwUniCluster 2.0+GFB-HPC" as a state service within the bwHPC framework. The bwUniCluster 2.0 replaces the predecessor system bwUniCluster and also includes the additional compute nodes which were procured as an extension to the bwUniCluster in November 2016.

The modern bwUniCluster 2.0 system consists of more than 840 SMP nodes with 64-bit Intel Xeon processors. It provides the universities of the state of Baden-Württemberg with general compute resources and can be used free of charge by the staff of all universities in Baden-Württemberg. Users who currently have access to bwUniCluster will automatically also have access to bwUniCluster 2.0. There is no need to apply for new entitlements or to re-register.

Scheduled maintenance

Due to regular maintenance work the HPC system bwUniCluster 2.0 will not be available from 06.10.2020 at 10:00 AM until 13.10.2020 at 10:00 AM. The system will not start any jobs that cannot be completed before the start of the maintenance period. All user processes still running on 06.10.2020 at 10:00 AM will be cancelled.

A preliminary list of the planned changes can be found here. This list will be extended and specified in the next days and weeks. The biggest change will be the operating system version which will be updated from Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.7 to version 8.2.

New security measures

On 13.08.2020 at 10 AM the following changes to the security policies will take effect:

For authentication, the use of a second factor (2-factor authentication) in addition to the service password will be mandatory. You can find the user documentation for this function here.

The use of SSH keys will be possible again. However, these can no longer be managed via the authorized_keys files, but only centrally via bwIDM. You can find the user documentation for this function here.

The following restrictions still apply:

Access is limited to IP addresses from within the campus networks of the respective home institutions of our current users. If you are outside of one of these networks (e.g. in your home office), a VPN connection to your home institution has to be established first (see e.g. [1] for the KIT).

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