University of Washington

E N A B L IN G WORLD-CHANGING DISCOVERY Provide a new 100G High Speed Research Network that will help UW researchers better compete for big data science projects and enhance the UW's data-driven research capabilities. The project is underway and partially funded by a National Science Foundation grant. Provide researchers more computing capacity for their research dollars. Hyak, the UW's high-performance shared computing cluster, has doubled its capacity to more than 1,000 nodes. Hyak saves users from having to procure and maintain their own systems. Lower rates and minimums for lolo, UW's centrally managed data storage service that supports data archiving and file sharing for researchers operating at all scales. Rates for lolo Archive were reduced 46 percent; lolo Collaboration, 22 percent. Minimum purchase requirements are now eight times lower. Support UW social science researchers with high-performance computing services. The Information School and Department of Communication now use the Hyak highperformance computing cluster for big data projects, joining more than three dozen other research groups in using UW-IT– supported high-performance compute, storage and networking services. Added enhanced resources for researchers to a national service portfolio offered by Internet2, a university consortium focused on innovative technology. UW-IT led the effort to provide Microsoft Azure with HIPAA- and FERPA-compliant storage and computing services in Internet2's NET+ portfolio at a significant discount, including a Business Associate Agreement to safe guard protected health information. more info Hyak shared computing cluster uw.edu/uwit/services/hyak Lolo scalable, file-based storage service uw.edu/uwit/services/ archivestorage The UW eScience Institute escience.uw.edu Astronomy Professor Andrew Connolly relies on UW's high-performance network to handle massive data sets. As part of this ambitious upgrade, UW-IT is also creating a 100G High Speed Research Network (HSRN) spanning the UW data centers and connecting to the outside research Internet through the Pacific Northwest Gigapop and Internet2. The combined backbone design and HSRN will offer dedicated data paths for researchers, including enhancements to UW's "Science DMZ," a network design promoted and partially funded by federal agencies that allows collaboration with peers at other institutions without being slowed down by firewalls. This, when used with large-scale storage and compute systems at UW like Hyak and lolo, will help support big data science projects. It's not only astronomy that needs this capacity, Donahue said. Other UW researchers are working on decoding the human genome, unraveling the mysteries of ocean currents and tectonic plates, and unearthing clues to discover core principles at the interface of mathematics, biology, and medicine, and they need it too. "Having this infrastructure helps UW get the best scientists, the best researchers and the best students." "If you don't have the underlying pipes, dealing with all this data can take weeks or even months," Connolly said. "With a thousand times more data than today's surveys, waiting a month to analyze it changes the sort of questions you're going to ask and changes the exploratory nature of science." In the end, many people will benefit from discoveries that emerge from the masses of data generated by UW researchers and supported by UW-IT, Donahue said. It might come in the form of previously undreamed-of cures for diseases or ways to prolong life, early warning of devastating tsunamis or fundamentally new understandings of the nature of the universe. "UW-IT is a good partner, open to thinking about providing resources we'll need five years down the road," Connolly said. "Having this infrastructure helps UW get the best scientists, the best researchers and the best students." 2013 ANNUAL REPORT 7

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