BSWIFT II Initiative Overview:

With the current version of BSWIFT rapidly aging, we are now actively working towards a progressive update plan that will ensure continued sandbox support for BSOS, while also addressing the obvious need to phase out older hardware.  These efforts will focus on major systems changes that will take place in 2024 and then again in 2026.

The 2024 upgrade will focus on establishing a new BSWIFT II system on newer hardware that will operate independently of the existing system.  Once the new buildout has been tested and proven stable, we will begin the process of migrating nodes that are still viable in the existing system over to BSWIFT II.  As part of this process, we anticipate the retirement of upwards of 20 nodes. 

In 2026, we plan to implement our last major upgrade, which will ensure continued system functionality for a five (5) year period. The 2026 upgrade will include the incorporation of more modern hardware architecture and will facilitate the full retirement of all currently existing BSWIFT hardware.

Project Updates:

Project progress / updates will be provided on a monthly basis, when available.

10/1/2023: Core hardware has been identified and infiniband switching is being installed in the chassis and on all associated nodes; OS provisioning will occur, once this is complete.

 

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BSWIFT I Information:

The High Performance Computing Cluster, nicknamed BSWIFT, is a BSOS-owned computing resource managed and maintained by the Office of Academic Computing Services (OACS) in the Behavioral and Social Sciences College (BSOS). This service, which is open to all BSOS faculty and faculty-sponsored students, is powered by an IBM System x iDataPlex system based on the University of Maryland's GLUE UNIX platform.

Please note: BSWIFT staff supports the hardware and operating system only. It is assumed that the BSWIFT user is already versed with Unix / Linux and can navigate via command line. Application and/or code support is provided to a limited extent.

BSWIFT Links:

Related Links:

NOTE: Documentation for DeepThought may be applied to BSWIFT since both systems share the same GLUE UNIX platform.

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