Welcome

Welcome to UABgrid

UABgrid is a technology platform designed to support research at UAB.

UABgrid is a framework for sharing data, accessing compute power, and collaborating with peers on campus and around the globe. Our goal is to provide a dynamic network of services that supports the development and execution of advanced research processes.

The UABgrid pilot was launched in September 2007 and has since focused on demonstrating the utility of the platform in three key areas:

• High Performance Computing (HPC) - combining clusters to power even the largest work loads
• Data Sharing - supporting the trusted exchange of information to spark new ideas
• Collaboration - putting the tools you need to work with others at your fingertips

This UAB research platform is being built on a technology foundation that serves the needs of prominent national and international initiatives like caBIG, the Open Science Grid, TeraGrid, and the LHC Computing Grid.

Construction of the research platform is lead by UAB IT in conjunction with a growing list of collaborators, including Computer Science, Engineering, CCC, CCTS, and HSIS. Our process follows an open source development model and is managed via the UABgrid development portal.

Current Initiatives

• High-Performance Computing
  • Cheaha is a resource for powering compute intensive research work loads. Cheaha provides 3Teraflops of dedicated compute power and can harness additional compute pools on and off campus in order to process even the most demanding compute work loads.
  • In March 2009 we successfully completed a demonstration of the aggregate power available via the grid by running a 1000 compute-hour bio-statistics workload in 4 hours on the Open Science Grid.

• Data Sharing
  • caBIG is an initiative of the National Cancer Institute to share data between cancer centers across the country. Two UAB data services have been connected to this national network.
  • A [http://dev.uabgrid.uab.edu/wiki/ResearchStorageSystem Research Storage System is being constructed to facilitate the execution of demanding computations and simplify the management of user data collections.

• Collaboration
  • The UABgrid pilot includes several popular web collaboration tools (wiki, email, and project management) that are being actively used in the development of UABgrid itself and
  • Additional tools will be added as time allows and interests evolve.