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.
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 arcts-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.