ITNews

Supercomputing statistics for the 2nd semester of 2021

The usage of HTCondor has increased considerably in the second semester of 2021, with about 1.225.000 CPU hours, compared to about 735.000 CPU hours in the first half of 2021. The 2021-S2 usage data mean that, on average, about 280 slots were used by HTCondor, almost 30% of all available slots. As for LaPalma, about 4.3 million CPU hours have been consumed by IAC users in the second semester of 2021, a modest 6% increase with respect to the same quantity for the first semester. It corresponds to about 50% of the total CPU time available to the IAC in that time period; on the other hand, non-IAC RES users have consumed about 67% of all the available CPU-hours. TeideHPC registered a fourfold usage increase in the second semester of 2021 with respect to the first semester, going from 160.000 to 670.000 CPU hours, a figure which corresponds approximately to about 30% of the time available to IAC users (87.500 CPU hours per week).

Visits to SIE's websites

In the course of 2021, our websites, https://research.iac.es/sieinvens/SINFIN/ and https://research.iac.es/sieinvens/siepedia/, have received a total of about 21 thousand visit. The most visited page (almost 4 thousand hits) has been the one titled "IRAF on Mac OS X - SIEpedia", which is a clear indication of both the great interest that IRAF still arises among astronomers, and of the fact that installing and using IRAF on the latest releases of macOS is getting more and more complicated. Visits from Spain account for about 25% of the total visits, with the USA second (14%) and Mexico third (11%). The most used operating system is Windows 10 (40% of the visits), followed by macOS 10.15 (22%), and Linux (15%). As for the browers, Google Chrome accounts for half of the visits, followed by Firefox (19%) and Safari (16%); also included in the statistics are some lesser known browsers such as Waterfox, Whale Browser or Cổc Cổc. Most people connect from a desktop PC (91% of the visits), followed by smartphones (7.5%) and phablets/tablets (1.2%). There are more than 400 different screen resolutions, the biggest being 5120x1440 and 4096x2160 pixels, the smallest 320x200.

These data have been collected using Matomo, an open-source alternative to Google Analytics which is running locally on our web server.

Below two tables listing the top 10 most visited pages and the top 10 countries. For a larger set of graphics, see http://carlota:81/SIE/softwarestats/pages/en/web-visits.php (internal access only).

Desktop PCs dropped from the HTCondor pool

Following the recommendations of the IAC Environment and Sustainability Commission, we have dropped desktop PCs from the HTCondor pool, except for those few desktops used to submit HTCondor jobs. These desktops are generally old, and have energy-inefficient CPUs compared with those in the Linux servers (familiarly known as "burros"); thus it makes sense not to run HTCondor jobs on such desktops, and run them all on our burros instead. This measure has reduced the HTCondor pool by about 200 slots and, at the time of writing, more than 900 slots are currently making up our pool.

We also take the opportunity to encourage all users that have a desktop machine which they use only occasionally, to consider retiring it, in the spirit of contributing to reach the goals set out by the Environment and Sustainability Commission. We all have a laptop for everyday use, while plenty of CPU power is available in our Linux servers (projects or public) to run demanding jobs. Also, data that cannot fit in the laptop can be relocated to projects's burros, to the 700 TB disk rack (to be upgraded soonish), or, for limited amounts of especially valuable data, to the NAS system.

The carbon footprint of a desktop PC + monitor, on 24 hours a day 365 days a year, is about 600 kg of CO yearly, with the current energy mix in Tenerife (80% coming from fossil fuels); this corresponds to a conventional car traveling 3000 km a year.

New version of Microsoft Office

The most installed version of Office on our computers was Office 2016, although we also had limited licenses for Office 2019.

We have now started the deployment of Office 2021 on Windows and Mac user stations after the granting of a package of perpetual Office Standard 2021 licenses, as part of the Smart Workplace measure, contained in the Digitalization Plan of Public Administrations 2021-2025, from the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation.

It must be considered that Office 2021 and Office 365 are not the same, in this external page you can find out about the differences.

See the news in our intranet at https://www.iac.es/en/outreach/news/office-2021

Personnel absences and participation in selection committees

Two new utilities has been added to the IAC intranet. The first allows you to check how many days you have taken as holidays or personal matters, and how many are left. Moreover, you can check the absences of the staff of your organizational unit or of any IAC employee. The second allows you to list all the selection committees in which you, or any other IAC employee, have participated and in which role (president, secretary, member). Full details can be found in https://www.iac.es/en/outreach/news/you-can-check-your-absences-intranet and and https://www.iac.es/en/outreach/news/do-you-know-which-tribunals-you-have-participated respectively.