Managing cloud resources

 If you currently pay for Cloud resources out of your own pocket or via a departmental credit card, we can help.

Research IT has built a framework within Amazon Web Services (AWS), the biggest supplier of cloud services, which will enable University researchers to use many resources available, including data storage.

This will enable researchers to take advantage of:

• A monthly invoice which can be charged back to a research (or other) account (no credit card needed!)
• Tech support and advice from Research IT, who will help you get started and make the best use of what is on offer.
• Aggregated procurement, which means that we can negotiate the best possible prices.

A limited amount of resources are being paid for by the Research Lifecycle Programme (RLP) in order to help develop this new service.

You can set up a new AWS account or move your existing account to the Research IT framework.

To join or find out more, contact:

• its-ri-team@manchester.ac.uk

Cloud resources in the Condor Pool  

Elastic compute is now available, bursting our Condor Pool into the Cloud!

The Condor Pool is a service for researchers at the University which uses the hundreds of PCs on campus when idle, allowing researchers to run computational work from the comfort of their office or home.

For many years, the Condor Pool has been running researchers’ computational jobs at night and weekends. Now, the Condor Pool will use resources in the Cloud in AWS if the Condor Pool is full, allowing more work to run in a cost effective way. The introduction of this pioneering facility is a huge step towards providing the appropriate technology to fully enable University of Manchester research success.

There are some initial free resources for people who wish to be early adopters, which are funded by the Research Lifecycle Programme. Longer term usage over a certain limit will be charged for.

The Condor Pool is particularly well-suited to large numbers of relatively small and short computational jobs and help is available to get you started. If you would like to take advantage of this new service or to discuss if your jobs are suitable, then please get in touch.  

• its-ri-team@manchester.ac.uk

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