EA: Upgrading the Geophysics Computing Facility at Arizona State University

Arizona State University, Scottsdale AZ

Investigators

Abstract

This award will replace and update the aging and failing servers of Geophysics Computing Facility (GCF) in the School of Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona State University (ASU). This computational facility has supported the research of seismological graduate students, undergraduate students, postdoctoral researchers, research staff, and faculty for well over two decades, resulting in degrees at all levels, job placements in academia and industry, as well as hundreds of conference presentations with research results published in over 100 peer-reviewed journal articles. The new computer system will replace servers that are roughly a decade old and showing signs of critical failure. The new system includes (1) a main server for all user account homes, all software packages, and will handle mass storage for our growing global seismic data set; (2) a backup server; and (3) and a small firewall server. The overarching objective of the new computer system will be to support both current and future NSF-funded research projects, which predominantly focuses on cutting-edge investigations of Earth and planetary interiors. The new system is specially designed and built for a paradigm shift in seismic mapping of the interior using massive global data sets, and automated methodologies to mine, process, and analyze the data. All developed software, data products, and models will be made publicly available. The new system will allow continued mentoring and training of students and postdocs in seismological/geophysical research on Earth and planetary interiors, which helps them in successful job placement. ASU is a Hispanic Serving Institution and one of the largest public universities in the US with a diverse population. ASU's GCF will continue to expose underrepresented populations to NSF-funded research, and more broadly, to the excitement of doing science. ASU's School of Earth and Space Exploration proactively supports belonging, accessibility, justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion. This award will replace and update the aging and failing servers of the GCF in the School of Earth and Space Exploration at ASU. The GCF supports the research of seismological graduate students, postdoctoral researchers, research staff, and faculty as well as undergraduate research projects. The current, decade old servers in the GCF are showing signs of critical failure: disk controllers as well as hard disks have failed on our two main servers (resulting in loss of storage capacity). In addition, and most importantly, the hardware is now too old for operating system updates which not only present a security issue but effectively stunts ongoing research activities. Funds from this grant will be used to purchase three new servers to replace the aging four-server system. The new system includes a main server that will house all user account homes, all software packages, and will handle mass storage for our growing global seismic data set; it will also include a backup server and a small firewall server. The main server will host a software suite recently written by our group that automatically collects (and soon will automatically process) data from nearly two dozen data agencies. This “big data” project involves storage capacity of over 150 Tb. Servers are tailored to the variety of seismological research project needs, allowing our NSF-funded research activities such as code development, access to GCF's in-house mass storage of global seismic data, and software applications for data processing, as well as web services and backups. Researchers can access the centralized updated GCF system from anywhere, via a remote connection on their computers. This centralized server model is effective for our large data set and heavy computational seismological research needs, since it is not possible to locally store even a fraction of the GCF data and software on local user machines. Research mentoring beyond traditional seismology students will be made possible from planned data products created from the growing global data set. This computer system upgrade will allow us to continue efforts to bring the excitement of scientific research to the public, the news media, students at all levels, as well as the scientific community. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.