The Computing commission was formed in October 2022 and is comprised of the following permanent staff, belonging to the three civil servant scales CT, IC, and PI: Jesús Ricote (CT), Eduardo R. Hernández (IC), Jesús González (PI), Oksana Fesenko (IC), Ceferino López (PI), Jose Ignacio Martínez (CT), Fernando Agulló (IC), Enrique Chacón (IC), Pablo San José (CT), Rui E. Silva, and Álvaro Jiménez Galán.
The goal of this commission is to coordinate and promote actions aimed at improving the institute's computation and communication infrastructure. This includes improving the security of our network, our resilience to computer attacks, protecting our data and hardware infrastructure, and optimizing our computational resources. These actions are then carried out by our IT department, which also provides us with key insight that allows us to outline plans and make decisions.
Typical activities involve upgrading and optimizing hardware affecting the computer cluster. Two recent examples are the deployment of an automatic system to enable the transparent sleep and resume of idle compute nodes to reduce its carbon footprint, and the upgrade of the uninterrupted power supply (UPS) system that was out of service. During such upgrades, we often gather technical information that helps us define future follow-ups. In the case of the UPS, we plan a second upgrade to have the two UPS units operate in parallel to gain redundancy. Many of our actions require close coordination with other departments, as for example the plan to upgrade and relocate the cluster room to a new location with a more modern, efficient, and safe support infrastructure, or the implementation of opsec measures from CSIC to reinforce our network against external ransomware attacks. Overall, we aim to optimize the quality of service of our compute infrastructure, its security, and its energy efficiency.
