How to participate in BRCF pods

Our Mission:
Biomedical Research Computing Facility (BRCF) "PODs" are small compute clusters that provide a standard hardware, software and storage architecture,​ ​suitable for small-scale, interactive research computing,​ ​that can be efficiently managed.​

If you are associated with a lab or organization that already has a BRCF pod (Available BRCF PODs), just create a BRCF account (Obtaining a BRCF Account) with the appropriate Affiliation specified and we will give you access to that POD.

Otherwise, we offer two cost models for POD access:

• POD equipment ownership – One or more labs or organizations purchase initial equipment for a POD, then pay a monthly maintenance fee.
• The Rental POD – A lab can request access to our Rental POD, which does not require equipment purchase but charges a higher monthly maintenance fee based on desired disk storage.

This page outlines these offerings. Interested parties should contact Anna Battenhouse (abattenhouse@utexas.edu), BRCF manager.

POD equipment ownership offering

This option is appropriate for those who expect to do heavy computing and/or have large storage requirements, and prefer to have more control over the resources in their computing environment.

In our "POD Equipment Ownership" offering, one or more groups purchase the initial POD servers then pay a monthly maintenance fee. PODs can be shared among participants, in which case they share in both initial equipment and monthly maintenance costs. As of January 1, 2025, BRCF monthly maintenance is $681/month for a full pod, or, for example, $340.50/month for a pod shared by two PIs. We can assist in finding a suitable partner if you select this option. (Note that this $72/mo, 11.8% increase, the first in two years, was needed to cover higher costs for both support personnel and equipment.)

A POD consists of one or more compute servers that share a storage server; thus there are three components to consider:

• Compute server(s) – how many, and how configured for RAM and cores
• The storage server – our standard is an empty 36-bay ThinkMate server
• Disks for the storage server – quantity/size depending on needs

Typical equipment costs for this offering are in the $18,000 - $45,000+ range depending on your desired compute and storage configurations, and current server pricing.

Compute servers

You can purchase one or more compute servers. Prices, with the UT Dell discount, vary considerably. Some recent (April 2024) examples:

• Dell R660xs; 256 RAM; 56 cores - $8,000
  
• Dell R660xs; 512 RAM; 56 cores - $10,000
  
• Dell R660xs; 768 RAM; 56 cores - $14,250
  
• Dell R7625: 768 RAM; 128 cores - $24,250
  

GPU-enabled servers are available from other vendors, but typically cost $40,000+. We can work with our UT Dell and ThinkMate representatives to help you order a suitable configuration.

Our standard compute server requirements are as follows:

• Dual power supplies
• Dual 10Gbit network interfaces
• Enterprise iDRAC or equivalent out of band management (OOBM)
  
• 5 years technical support (but not next-day)

Storage server

Our standard storage server is an empty 36-bay ThinkMate, with 192 GB RAM or more, depending on configured storage (more TB of storage requires more GB of RAM). The cost is around $8,100. We will obtain a quote for you for your desired RAM configuration.

Disks

The storage server has 36 bays, and we populate them in groups of 6 (a "vdev"), so up to 6 vdevs can be populated. It is generally best to start with at least 2 vdevs (12 disks), although having just one vdev is acceptable. We also require that you purchase extra disks as spares (e.g. 1 extra for each vdev).

Two of each group of 6 vdev disks are reserved for redundancy (RAID-like), so there are effectively 4 storage-available disks in each vdev. The formula for calculating a vdev's available storage is:

per vdev (6 disks) available = <individual disk capacity> * 4 * 0.875

So, for example:

• 1 vdev of 16 TB disks is ~56 TB = 16 * 4 * 0.875
• 2 vdevs of 16 TB disks is ~112 TB
• 3 vdevs  of 16TB disks is ~168 TB

Additional storage can be added later, in groups of 6 (plus 1 spare), so folks often start with just 2 or 3 vdevs. However, note that additional vdevs must be populated with the same capacity disks.

We recommend Amazon for disk purchases. Some recent (October, 2024) prices are shown below. Disk prices often go up and down, so be sure to check the latest!

Rental POD offering

This option is appropriate for those with less demanding computational requirements, need less storage initially, or cannot fund the initial POD equipment purchase.

In this "Rental POD" offering, participants have no initial equipment buy-in but instead pay a larger per-TB/month maintenance fee. Monthly fees as of January 1, 2025 are shown below. Allocations can be increased at any time, and all we need from you to get started is an account number for monthly billing.

As described in Available BRCF PODs, the Rental pod has two Dell PowerEdge R640 compute servers, available to all Rental pod participants, both with dual 18-core/36-hyperthread CPUs (for a total of 26 cores/72 hyperthreads each). RentComp01 has 768 GB of RAM and a 900 GB local SSD for fast local I/O, while RentComp02 has 256 GB RAM and a 450 GB local SSD. A 3rd Dell R640 compute server will be added soon.

Although these are nice beefy servers, the Rental POD is shared among a number of groups, so it is important to be a responsible user of POD resources. See Using POD resources wisely for more information.