April 2018 - September 2018
Mike Schmidt, Matt Perna
IDD cluster -- We’ve completed the purchase of updated IDD cluster hardware for eventual installation at the NCAR Wyoming SuperComputing Center (NWSC). After configuration and installation at the NWSC, the cluster will replace the aging Foothills Lab (FL) cluster that has served us well for many years. Notable changes include 10Gb/s network service and the ability for LDM queue sizes to triple from the current 100GB.
GOES-16 -- We’ve moved the GOES-16 ingest dish from the Mesa Lab (ML) to the Foothills Lab (FL) cafeteria dish.. This resolved the terrestrial interference (TI) issue encountered with the ML dish. On the down side, we endure a significant signal degradation to complete signal loss when Facilities uses leaf blowers in the courtyard.
GOES-17 -- The ML dish is now actively receiving GOES-17 data and we have a system processing the data via CSPP-GEO on a system in the ML data center.
100Gb/s networking -- as UCAR upgrades their backbone infrastructure from 10-20Gb/s links to 100Gb/s links, we will continue to upgrade our data movers (IDD cluster nodes, data aggregators, motherlode clones) from 2 x 1Gbp/s bonded ethernet to 10Gb/s as necessary.. The addition of GOES-S data in late 2018 will require the need soon anyway.
UCAR FISMA -- UCAR currently has contractual FISMA requirements for a small parts of the organization (none for Unidata currently), but the plan is to start down the path of making the entire organization FISMA compliant at some level yet to be determined (probably low, possibly medium). We continue to attend meetings to stay connected to the process
Security -- we continue efforts to keep services and systems secure which takes consistent attention and occasional herculean efforts (to patch everything all at once).
LDM 7 node -- we maintain a LDM7 test node at the Front Range GigaPOP (FRGP) just off downtown Denver in co-location with the major backbone networks supporting FRPG participants (UCAR, ..). We expect to support intensive data movement and LDM testing for the next few years on this effort.
Desktop backups -- we’re in the middle of evaluating an improved desktop backup solution
Prepared September 2018