Each group can contribute to /sdf/data and /sdf/scratch by funding the acquisition of flash-based and spindle-based storage. We will procure, install, and configure your newly acquired hardware and we will integrate it with the existing infrastructure. We will maintain the hardware for at least 5 years from the acquisition and we will cover the file system licensing costs.
In addition, S3DF will provide high speed, flash-based systems for /sdf/{home, sw, group} and provide the relative backups. See the storage section for a description of the different S3DF file systems.
Each group can contribute hardware to the interactive pools and to SLURM. The hardware for the interactive pools is dedicated to the group. Contributions to the SLURM batch system will grant the funding group a number of computing hours corresponding to the hardware they buy for up to 5 years. For this approach to work, we will deploy a banking mechanism that keeps track of the number of hours each group spends on each SLURM partition.
In addition, S3DF will be able to provide some number of hours on several of the SLURM partitions to all groups, independently of their contributions. Talk with us if you need SLAC-funded hours for your group.
Contributing groups can also purchase dedicated resources for long running services and for the real-time and fast-feedback stages in the data flow.
In order to mininimize the variety of hardware we need to support, contrubuting groups will be able to only select models from a fixed menu. This menu will include one or two models of CPU servers, a low-end GPU, one high-end GPU, one flash-based server, and one spindle-based JBOD model. This menu will be updated ~annually to reflect changes in technology.
All contributions will fund the actual hardware plus 15% overhead for spares, installation and infrastructure costs. The S3DF team decides how to spend the overhead. The overhead is not due for deployments that fund the entire infrastructure - that entails spares, installation labor, racks, cables, and network devices.