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Hardware and Architecture

Hardware

At the centre of the DAFNI platform

At the centre of the DAFNI platform is an HTC (High Throughput Computing) Kubernetes Cluster. The deployed hardware consists of several server nodes (specifications are shown below), which currently forms a core computing capacity. We are currently investigating how to best use resources from the STFC Cloud to expand the capacity of the DAFNI platform in the near future, in a highly scalable manner.

Several Dell PowerEdge R740xd2 Rack Servers (120 cores in total). Each Server is equipped with:

2×Intel Xeon Silver 4210 CPUs (each with 10 cores).

128GB RDIMMs – RAM

20×14TB 7k RPM SAS drives – 280TB Storage

(One of the servers includes two V100 GPU’s)

Storage

DAFNI also makes use of an expandable PureStorage NVM-e/SSD Flash Storage Appliance for our self-hosted Virtual Machines.

In order to achieve DAFNI’s goal of providing a common platform for shared data, and models, and to help create a shared space for collaborations, the overall DAFNI architecture has been designed around a set of core components.

National Infrastructure Database

The NID provides a searchable catalogue of data for DAFNI, and manages the uploading and publication of data. It also handles the metadata provided with the data, which is used in searches.

National Infrastructure Modelling Service

The NIMS provides a suite of accessible models and facilitates the development of multi-systems models. Models in DAFNI are containerised (using docker), which allows models to be uploaded and used in workflows regardless of language, and helps prevent legacy issues with dependencies.

National Infrastructure Visualisation Suite

The NIVS supports basic graph construction with a visual editor for csv files, and also supports Jupyter notebooks for more advanced analysis of data.

 

Interested in collaborating with DAFNI?

If you would be interested in using DAFNI, would like to access Data on DAFNI or involve us in a new project, we would like to hear from you.  Please complete your details on the contact form using the link and we will be in contact with you by email.