The Division of Information Technology (DoIT) is responsible for regularly developing and implementing the UMBC Campus Cyber Infrastructure plan for the campus. This plan was developed in consultation with the VP of Research and campus shared governance in 2016 and will be updated in early 2020. As part of that plan, DoIT provides the following services to researchers (faculty and graduate students) on campus:
- High Performance Computing – DoIT, in collaboration with the Vice President of Research, provides operational support for the campus HPC core facility. In early 2019, UMBC set up a a heterogeneous cluster with equipment acquired in 2013 and 2018. It contains over 170 CPU nodes, a GPU cluster with a node containing 4 NVIDIA Tesla V100 GPUs, and an 8-node Big Data cluster. This is a NSF funded system supporting parallel programming with over 1100 Terabytes of high performance storage.
- Advanced Networking –DoIT operates the on-campus and off-campus network to support campus. UMBC, through a NSF CC*IIE award to CIO Jack Suess in 2014, UMBC was among the first 70 universities to be connected at 100Gb to the Internet2 backbone. To support advanced networking UMBC is a member of Internet2, the Mid-Atlantic Crossroads (MAX), and the MD Research and Education Network (MDREN). UMBC also has a backup 10GB connection to MDREN.
- Storage – DoIT manages over 1 petabyte of storage used by researchers and is working closely with the deans and VP of Research to build a robust storage architecture to meet the needs of researchers. In addition, to HPC storage, researchers can take advantage of Box, a web-based storage service used by UMBC that provides researchers with unlimited web-based storage, Google drive, and Microsoft Onedrive..
- Software – DoIT manages and pays for many of the campus software packages used for research. DoIT provides free to faculty the following software — Microsoft Windows, Apple OS, Microsoft Work, Redhat Linux, Matlab, SAS, SPSS, Mathematica, along with a number of limited use licenses. All software can be found and downloaded at http://my.umbc.edu/go/software
- Cloud – UMBC has procured cloud computing contracts through the Internet2 NET+ program with AWS and Google Cloud. Researchers interested in using the cloud for their research should meet with Damian Doyle, Deputy CIO, who will walk them through the process.
- New Media Studio – DoIT’s New Media Studio provides support for digital storytelling, video production, web site development, and publication support for researchers and campus units. The studio works closely with faculty in the digital humanities.