IT Core

The institute in its previous generation had IT personnel embedded within the departments, while the current generation takes a different approach with consolidating IT into one central service unit: CFIT (Core Facility IT). The benefits of this approach are manifold: from better transfer and dissemination of knowledge, bundling and sharing of resources, specialization of personnel, easier handover of tasks (holidays replacements), standardization of procedures, to name a few.

As part of the IT-consolidation process, a new head of IT was recruited and existing IT personnel merged into one service unit.

Communication:

To better the communication of IT problems within the institute and to allow multiple IT personnel to work on individual tasks (sequentially or collaboratively), a new Helpdesk and project management system (Atlassian Jira) was implemented and customized. This serves as first point of contact for all scientists and allows the tracking of progress for short-running simple IT-issues as well as long-running projects. This allows to streamline repeating tasks (such as frequent on- and offboarding of new users) and ensure the same process is followed, regardless of who is working on the task. Furthermore, solutions to already solved problems can be found and reused.

The previous, dated, intranet system has been replaced by a new one (Atlassian Confluence), old information has been migrated, and much more content has been added. Noteworthy is the excellent search functionality of this system which allows easy information retrieval. Confluence allows separation of content eg. by workgroup, with fine-grained permission control (if needed), provides many macros and templates (eg. for meeting notes, task lists etc.), notifications, versioning and also features an integration of JIRA, which makes linking between the two systems seamless. The power of the system combined with ease of use helped to ensure quick acceptance of this systems by the users and proved to be invaluable in times of Corona.

Client management:

CFIT supports a diverse environment including Windows, Mac, and Linux Operating systems with a multitude of available (commercially and free) software. To help with the task of installing and managing (windows) computers, a client lifecycle management software (Aagon ACMP) was procured and rolled out. With this software it is possible to automate several tasks, from (re-)installation of Windows computers, software deployment, to hardware and software inventory, patch-level management, and license tracking. This will allow us to standardize our system setups which makes it easier for IT and users to use these systems. This also makes it easier to track and fix security issues in a timely fashion.
While this only affects Windows computers, which currently are the majority of desktops at the institute, we also support Apple/Mac computers, and we also need a way to standardize and automate the rollout/management of these systems. For this, we use the software JAMF, hosted at the GWDG Göttingen. With this, we can assign default and/or individual roles and profiles to all/individual devices, distribute software, and ensure security updates. As the next step, we will implement a similar solution also for Linux computers, to complete our life-cycle management of all supported operating systems.
Recent decades have seen a rapid rise in collaborative activities in scientific research, and more broadly across many sectors of society. Driven by new information technologies such as the Web as well as the increasing complexity and interdisciplinary nature of today's research problems, are driving the need for technologies that enable researchers to collaborate effectively continues to grow rapidly. Currently we are implementing an Open Source Data Management Software (iRODS, integrated Rule Oriented Data System), a state-of-the-art software that supports collaborative research, management, sharing, publication, and long-term preservation of data that are distributed. This tool will help with ingesting, indexing, storing, and providing data at the petabyte-scale from the institute's MRT-scanners.

Storage:

The next step in IT-Consolidation is the implementation of an institute-wide project-storage to facilitate safe data storage and exchange within the institute. For this, a 2PB Lenovo-Storage-System has been acquired and set up as GPFS-Cluster. This also serves as high-performance storage connected via 100GB network to the HPC-Cluster.

HPC:

For high-speed data analysis, CFIT manages two high-performance clusters (one local in Tübingen and an identical one colocated at the MPCDF in Garching), with 34 nodes each, using 64 cores and up to 1TB of RAM including two dedicated GPU-nodes with 4 high-performance GPUs.

A job scheduling system (slurm) is used to allow fair usage of these resources, while using modular software and using 'singularity' to allow virtually any software to run containerized on these machines.

Consulting:

Besides advice to individuals, we also organize courses for the whole institute / campus, including "Python for High-Performance Computing" and "Software Carpentry-Course: Good Coding Practice".

The Core Facility IT also has a dedicated data privacy expert for consultation on any data protection issue (eg. GDPR/DSGVO, access to a subject database).

IT-Security:

An ever increasing aspect of today's IT landscape involves IT security and privacy / data protection. It is a challenging task to combine an open scientific environment, allowing free exchange of data and unrestricted access with today's reality of ransomware attacks, encryption, and data exfiltration. We will try to raise awareness for this topic amongst our users to find solutions that satisfy current needs while minimizing impact on the scientist's work. As one example for the challenges we currently face: we not only support all major operating systems in different versions, but also, at the same time, supporting BYOD (bring your own device, eg. scientists using computers from their previous workplace) as well as remote connections from untrusted devices (eg. via VPN from home, which usage increased drastically in 2020/2021 due to Corona).