In the first half of 2025 HTCondor has used up about 900 000 CPU hours, a significant increase with respect to the second semester of 2024, when we reached a total number of 646 500 CPU hours. 900 000 CPUh corresponds to an average of about 208 CPU cores devoted to HTCondor jobs.
The statistics for LaPalma have been impacted by the switch-off of half
the cores, due to energy (and money) saving measures: since the end of
March, 2048 cores have been available exclusively to IAC researchers
(this means no usage at all by other RES users). Anyway, in the first
semester of 2025, about 6 million CPU hours have been consumed by IAC users, and
1.4 by RES users.
We take this opportunity to remind you that on September 1st LaPalma will be
switched off, and will then be dismantled to make room for the new LaPalma4
supercomputer. Note that only the data in the storage unit, those under
/storage/datanode, will be kept available; all other data will
be lost, unless you make a backup.
Usage of TeideHPC has slightly increased with respect to 2024, with significant utilization of the GPUs there available. In the first half of 2025, about 1 million CPU hours and 60 thousand GPU hours have been used. In comparison, in the whole 2024, about 1.9 million CPU hours and 90 thousands GPU hours were used.
Around March this year, we started the "open-project" burros initiative, which aims at opening to all IAC users those computational resources which were previously restricted to a limited number of users (usually those belonging to the research group that bought the machine), and which were under-utilized, so as to increase the overall computational output and efficiency. Specifically, the term "open-project" identifies a burro whose PI has graciously allowed researchers outside the project to use it, though with certain conditions to ensure minimal disruption to project users.
We have currently 5 burros in this group: dampe, debut, dolme, dalia, doctor (the last two equipped with a GPU). You can check their details at https://vesta.ll.iac.es/SIE/hpc/burros/index.html.
You can consult the current usage conditions for non-project users. At present we are still evaluating if the proposed policy is adequate, and you are encouraged to submit jobs to these "open-project" burros, so that we can assess the level of impact on project users' jobs and fine-tune this policy if needed.
You can also visit the Burro usage dashboard to check out their load, and decide which machines would be most suitable to run your jobs.
After the change summer last year in the authentication method for the VPN, based now on two-factor authentication, for security reasons CCA users could not longer access remotely the CCA computers. The IAC's SI and the ULL's STIC have found an excellent alternative, which is accessing the CCA computers using the ULL's VPN (authenticating with the ULL credentials).
We have updated the corresponding page in the CCA wiki site. The first step, generating and using the ssh keys for authentication may look a bit involved, but it's quite simple. Indeed, one advantage of this setup is that one can log in remotely on a CCA machine without the need to type the password every time.
Note that users who used to connect to the CCA machines after validating on the IAC's VPN can continue to do so.
The University of La Laguna (ULL) has an agreement with MathWorks that grants the entire student body and teaching staff access to MATLAB, Simulink and other products, both on- and off-campus. This means that if you have a valid ULL account, you can download MATLAB (installers are available for Linux, Mac Intel and Mac Silicon, and Windows) and install it on your laptop or desktop (at least in Linux, no root/sudo permissions are required; not sure about Mac and Windows). The steps are as follows (as per instructions by the STIC service at the ULL):
If you have a ULL account and want to install and run MATLAB on your computer, but need help, please drop us a line. Some accounts had problems securing a MATLAB licence, receiving a message saying the "you are not permitted to use this license for Universidad de la Laguna". If you hit the same problem, please let us know, so as to open a ticket at the HelpDesk of the STIC.