Hardware installed at the BFUCC

Computers

The Computing Centre operates 4 public computer configurations:

HP XC Cluster Platform 4000
Name : HYDRA
Usage : High performance computing
Configuration : an HP Cluster Platform 4000 with 30 compute nodes, each having 4 dual-core AMD Opteron processors running at 2.4 GHz and with 32 GB RAM, together with 1 control and 1 service node, alongside one file server based on HP StorageWorks Scalable File Share with 2 administration servers, 2 Object Storage servers and 6 SFS20 enclosures providing a net disk space of 6 Terabyte.
The whole system has an aggregate peak performance of approximatively 1 Teraflops.
References : HYDRA documentation webpage.
 
SunFire V1280 Server
Name : MACH
Usage : E-mail (POP, IMAP, SMTP), WWW (personal pages), FTP space.
Configuration : A SunFire V1280 Server with 8 UltraSparc-III CPU's (1.2 GHz), 2 internal disks of 73 GB, 800 GB of user diskspace on the Storage Area Network and 32 GB of RAM. The operating system is Solaris 9.
References : MACH documentation
Sun Enterprise 4500
Name : NESTOR
Usage : Storage and archiving
Configuration : A Sun Enterprise 4500 with 6 UltraSparc-II processors (400 MHz), 6 Gigabytes of RAM and 4 Terabytes of diskspace on the Storage Area Network; includes a DLT-8000 tape robot with 4 drives and several hundreds of high capacity tapes ;
References : NESTOR announcement, NESTOR webpage
Other Sun configurations
A 2-processor SunFire V240 with 8 GB RAM and 73 Gbyte disk (Web server) and a 4-processor Sun Ultra 450 with 1 Gbyte of RAM and 27 Gbyte disk (Network News server).

Data Storage & Backup

Several systems are installed for offline data storage data and to perform periodic backups of user and system files. Read about the technical details about the backups and File archival at the Computing Centre.

Tape, cassette and cartridge input/output

Magnetic Tape reader
an ancient 12" tape reader; 9 tracks, 800 to 6250 bpi; ASCII and EBCDIC format
Exabyte reader
2 Exabyte units (8 mm) are available; capable of reading/writing 5 GB non-compressed or 10 GB compressed.
DLT reader
in the ASTER configuration
DAT reader
in the ASTER configuration - DDS3 format is supported

Users wishing to have tapes/cartridges read or written on any of the abovementioned units are kindly requested to contact a member of the User Support Group.

Printers and Plotters

B&W Postscript printer
a QMS 1660E processes up to 16 pages per minute, ASCII or Postscript, A4 or A3 paper sizes
Colour Postscript printer
an HP Color LaserJet 5500 printer, A4 and A3 page size, Postscript files
Two HP DesignJet 4000PS Plotters
accept HPGL, Postscript, PDF, TIFF and JPEG, print width of 0.914 m (up to A0 page size and above) and max. up to 1.067m,  2400/1200 dpi resolution,  HP Double SWATH technology
Driver for PC and Driver for Mac.
Also see the How To Plot Guide

See also the practical printer guide.


VUB/ULB Computing Centre
Created: 22 June 2000; Last update: 7 December 2006
Email: User Support Group.