After a slow start at the beginning of the year, HTCondor has acquired great speed and reached a record of 423,000 CPU hours in June, which means that, out of about 1600 CPU cores, on average 587 (40% of all cores) were running HTCondor jobs. In total, 970,000 CPU hours were used up by HTCondor in the first semester of 2024.
As for the LaPalma3 supercomputer, the number of CPU hours used by IAC researchers in the first semester of 2024 has increased slightly with respect to the same semester last year, from 8.26 to 9.08 million hours, while the CPU hours for the RES allocation pool has decreased from 7.14 to 6.14 million hours. The total for 2024, 1st semester is 15.22 million hours.
The usage of public burros with Slurm has seen an increase this semester. So far, in diva a total of ~400k CPU-hours have been used this year. In deimos, our burro with two P100 Nvidia GPUs, a total of 18k CPU-hours were used. The other smaller burros (denso, dejar and duna) sum up a total of 38k CPU-hours. If you have smaller jobs that fit in those systems, it is a good time to use them!
We have been keeping track of the usage of IDL floating licenses since 2013. However, this is only a lower limit on the real usage of IDL at the IAC, because there are many laptops with node-locked licenses for which we cannot collect any usage data. The figure below shows that between 2013 and 2018 there was a steady usage of about between 30 and 50 floating licenses, followed by a marked decrease beginning at the end of 2018 and ending in the last months of 2020. From 2021 on, the consumption of floating licenses has been roughly constant at about 10-12 licenses. Note though that these data are monthly averages, and that there can be significant fluctuations day by day (see for instance the more detailed usage data for 2024). Also noteworthy is the presence of die-hard IDL users who are still running IDL v8.5 or even earlier releases (v8.5 came out in 2015).
As you may know, we have an institutional-level subscription to Overleaf, a premier online LaTeX editor. This subscription entitles us to allocate up to 60 "Standard" licenses, previously referred to as "Collaborator" licenses. Currently, all 60 licenses have been assigned, resulting in a temporary unavailability of additional licenses.
The Overleaf company is continuously enhancing its product offerings with new functionalities. The most recent addition is an improved mechanism for creating and editing tables within the editor. Furthermore, users now possess the capability to copy and paste tables and formatted text directly into the Visual Editor while preserving the original formatting intact. Individuals seeking more comprehensive information about Overleaf are advised to consult the official Blog and the Overleaf and LaTeX Resources page.
Overleaf also provides insightful usage data, which we have diligently compiled and made available on the Overleaf usage statistics web page. This resource offers a detailed account of how our users are leveraging the Overleaf platform, facilitating data-driven decision-making and continuous improvement.
The IT Services (SI) of the IAC are pleased to report that last June they obtained Certification in the National Security Scheme (ENS), in the basic category for the profile of compliance with essential requirements. This security certification is an important milestone for the IAC because it has tried to meet the requirements for ten years without success.
The work does not end with it though. Several commitments must be fulfilled before the next audit. On one hand, users must take an online course on the National Security Scheme, after which, once they pass the final test, they receive a "Certificate of Completion" signed by the National Cryptologic Center (CCN). On the other hand, the SI must carry on with the hardening of laptops, as well as desktop PCs and computing servers, the encryption of external devices (pen drives, USB hard disks, etc.), and the implementation of specific security policies in laboratories and telescope facilities.
Remember: security is an individual responsibility but also a team responsibility. Any incident can have disastrous consequences for the entire center. We appreciate all the efforts you can make to help us prevent them.
Despite what the name might suggest, SwissTransfer cannot be used to deposit money or gold ingots in a bank caveau in Zürich or Geneve. It's rather a European alternative to WeTransfer.com: it allows you to send up to 50 GB of data at once, free of charge and without registration, with files kept on the server for up to 30 days. It has also extensions for Firefox and Chrome. If you were using wetransfer.com, we encourage you to try SwissTransfer instead!