The Yottabyte Research Cloud, powered by Verge.io, is a partnership between the ITS and Yottabyte that provides U-M researchers with high-performance, secure, and flexible computing environments enabling the analysis of sensitive data sets restricted by federal privacy laws, proprietary access agreements, or confidentiality requirements.
Upcoming maintenance
Yottabyte (Blue) to retire April 2022
Yottabyte (Blue) will retire on April 4, 2022. Yottabyte (Maize) for sensitive data will continue to be offered as a service. You can determine if your virtual server is hosted in ‘Blue’ if the hostname has ‘blue’ in its name, such as ‘yb-hostname.blue.ybrc.umich.edu.’
A member of the ARC Yottabyte team or someone from your unit will reach out to you to determine your needs and help you develop migration plans.
What do I need to do
- Review your data and projects that are currently utilizing Yottabyte (Blue). Delete anything you do not need to migrate.
- Make plans for an alternate hosting platform that you would like to move your virtual machine to, including these options provided by ITS:
- If you are no longer using your Yottabyte (Blue) virtual server or you are opting to shut it down without moving, please send an email to arc-support@umich.edu, and let us know that it can be decommissioned.
What is retiring?
ARC’s Yottabyte (Blue) provides U-M researchers with high-performance, secure, and flexible computing environments through the following services:
- Research Database Hosting, an environment that can house research-focused data stored in a number of different database engines.
- Virtual desktops for research. This service is similar to Glovebox but is suitable for data that is not classified as sensitive.
- Docker Container Service. This service can take any research application that can be containerized for deployment
When is YBRC ‘Blue’ retiring?
Yottabyte (Blue) will retire on April 4, 2022. Yottabyte (Maize) for sensitive data will continue to be offered as a service.
Check your virtual server name to confirm that your virtual server is hosted in YBRC ‘Blue’ (the hostname has ‘blue’ in its name, such as ‘yb-hostname.blue.ybrc.umich.edu’).
Why is YBRC ‘Blue’ retiring?
The YBRC ‘Blue’ services are underutilized making it difficult to build an affordable service with its current and projected user base.
Where can I move my machine?
Researchers who are using these YBRC ‘Blue’ services for their work can leverage other services provided by Information & Technology Services. See below as possible replacements:
Please note: The above-mentioned services provided by ITS (MiDatabase, MCloud Kubernetes Service, and MiServer) all have costs associated with use.
Not using your virtual machine? Let us know!
If you are not currently using or not planning to use your virtual machine, please let ARC know that machine can be decommissioned by sending us an email at arc-support@umich.edu. You can then remove your data as soon as feasible to prevent a rush leading up to Monday, April 4, 2022.
Still using your virtual machine? We’ll reach out!
If you are currently using your machine, a member of your Unit IT group or a member of the ARC staff will reach out to you regarding the decommissioning of your system and work with you for alternate hosting options.
More about Yottabyte Research Cloud
The system is built on Yottabyte’s composable, software-defined infrastructure platform called Cloud Composer, and represents U-M’s first use of software-defined infrastructure for research, allowing the on-the-fly personalized configuration of any-scale computing resources.
Cloud Composer software inventories the physical CPU, RAM and storage components of Cloud Blox appliances into definable and configurable virtual resource groups that may be used to build multi-tenant, multi-site infrastructure as a service.
See the September 2016 press release for more information.
The YBRC platform can accommodate sensitive institutional data classified up to High — including CUI — as identified in the Sensitive Data Guide.
Capabilities
The Yottabyte Research Cloud supports the following platforms for researchers at the University of Michigan:
- Secure Enclave Services, an environment for the analysis of restricted data from HIPAA through Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI). This service is formerly known as Glovebox.
The following Services are deprecated in the current implementation of YBRC, and will not be replicated in future versions of the ARC Private Cloud environment. We are not taking new customers for any of these services.
- Data Pipeline Tools, which include databases, message buses, data processing and storage solutions. This platform is suitable for sensitive institutional data classified up to High — including CUI, and data that is not classified as sensitive.
- Research Database Hosting, an environment that can house research-focused data stored in a number of different database engines.
- Virtual desktops for research. This service is similar to Glovebox but is suitable for data that is not classified as sensitive.
- Docker Container Service. This service can take any research application that can be containerized for deployment.
Researchers who need to use Hadoop or Spark for data-intensive work should explore ARC’s separate Hadoop cluster.
Contact arc-support@umich.edu for more information.
Hardware
The system deploys 40 high performance Hyper-converged YottaBlox nodes (H2400i-E5), each consisting of two, Intel Xeon E5-2680V4 CPU (1,120 cores total), 512GB DDR4 2400MHz RAM (20,480GB total), dual port 40GbE network adapters (80 total) and (2) 800GB NVMe SSD DC P3700 drives (64TB); and 20 storage YottaBlox nodes (S2400i-E5-HDD), each consisting of two, Intel Xeon E5-2620V4 CPU (320 cores total), 128 GB DDR4 2133MHz RAM (2,560 GB total), quad port 10GbE network adapters (80 total), (2) 800 GB DC S3610 SSD (32 TB total) and 12 x 6 TB 7200 RPM (1,440TB total).
Access
These tools are offered to all researchers at the University of Michigan free of charge, provided that certain usage restrictions are not exceeded. Large-scale users who outgrow the no-cost allotment may purchase additional YBRC resources. All interested parties should contact arcts-support@umich.edu.
Sensitive Data
The U-M Research Ethics and Compliance webpage on Controlled Unclassified Information provides details on handling this type of data. The U-M Sensitive Data Guide to IT Services is a comprehensive guide to sensitive data.