IT Group

The IT group is in charge of the operation and development of the IT-infrastructure of the institute. This includes workstation and server systems, storage, archives, wire based and wireless LAN, Internet access, Internet services and remote access. The online storage capacity of the MPIMG on disk-based file servers exceeds 3.7PB of data. The monthly backup volume sums up to about 85 TB, whereas the tape and disk-based offline archived data currently comprises about 1 PB. Presently the group serves about 450 Windows based PCs and 300 Linux/Unix systems with a variety of hard- and software components and about 100 OSX systems. A variety of web servers are protected by a fire-wall installation, about 60 web servers are active and maintained. The active hard- and software development of the group serves the scientific departments as well as the service and administration groups. Since 2008, the new requests of the NGS technology have dramatically increased the effort of the IT group to serve the computational and storage needs for data processing and analysis. We developed a new concept for short and long term data storage based on disk-arrays, installed a storage capacity of more than 3500 TB and increased the computational power by more than a factor of 100. Currently we are running about 3000 CPU cores with 13000 GB RAM spread over about 300 Linux systems ranging from single core systems with 256 MB RAM up to 64 multicore servers with 512 GB RAM.

Our internal network backbone is based on 10 GbE technology and is currently fed by approx. 50 interconnected network interfaces, from Isilon storage systems via multicore compute servers up to huge file- and archive servers. The inhouse LAN is segmented by about 180 manageable switches giving us the flexibility to control each segment and if necessary to configure each switch port individually. To supply a stable and reliable infrastructure for our IT equipment, we planned and implemented two physically separated server rooms. The storage and archive server room located in tower 4 is capable of supplying 180 kW cooling capacity and houses 20 server racks. The room has been reconstructed without service interrupts from a laboratory equipment room with free flow air cooling to a closed cold aisle containment system. For the second server room, located in the new tower 3, we will establish a warm aisle containment system, which shall be capable of cooling down 450 kW. The 30 racks installed will be used for network, computing, storage and multicore clusters, and provide space for 1400 rack units. The IT group is very active in the training and education of young technicians, students, trainees and apprentices.

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