Karlsruhe 2024 – scientific programme

Parts | Days | Selection | Search | Updates | Downloads | Help

T: Fachverband Teilchenphysik

T 44: Data, AI, Computing 4 (workflow)

T 44.7: Talk

Tuesday, March 5, 2024, 17:30–17:45, Geb. 30.34: LTI

User-oriented sustainable operation of the VISPA Cloud Services — Niclas Eich, Johannes Erdmann, Martin Erdmann, Benjamin Fischer, Paul Gilles, •Tim Hauptreif, and Jan Kelleter — RWTH Aachen University

As the effects of climate change become more imminent, scientists from all disciplines are striving to make their research more sustainable. As computing clusters are an essential part of modern research, they need to be improved in terms of sustainability. Various measures to reduce the carbon footprint of our computing centres include monitoring power consumption, increasing the efficiency of hardware and software, and influencing user behaviour.

We present our efforts to increase the sustainability of the VISPA computing cluster (https://vispa.physik.rwth-aachen.de) by introducing resource-aware scheduling and leveraging user interaction. Maintaining the relatively small VISPA cluster puts us in a unique position where we can freely test different energy saving schedules and get direct feedback from academic researchers and students alike. While scheduling is an ongoing research topic for many, especially large computing clusters, few can adapt directly to user feedback. We are sharing our experience in providing more sustainable computing resources with minimal disruption to our users’ research progress.

Keywords: Computing; Computing Cluster; Sustainability; Batch-System; Scheduling