IT Services and Computing

The IT Services and Computing Unit provides a wide range of network and computing solutions for the institute giving support to users and projects. The service catalogue covers a wide spectrum, ranging from the installation and configuration of desktop and laptop computers to scientific computing, including the operation of computer farms with hundreds of multi-core CPUs .

The nature of the research conducted at the institute often, if not always, requires computing facilities. Theoretical physicists use computers to solve complex equations, while experimentalists use them to process data from their experiments or simulations. All of them write documents, send emails, access scientific databases and collaborate with other researchers through computer networks. Our computer service has more than 20 years and has pioneered the use and spread of new technologies, such as computer networks (FAENET) or the web in the past and the GRID at present.

Our services are provided to about 200 users that employ 300 desktops and laptops. The computer centre houses several clusters with a total of 200 computer nodes (around 2000 cores) and 1.2 PBytes of disk storage, some of them using GRID technologies. More than 30 servers are constantly operating to provide email and web services, storage, resource management, user access, monitoring services, printing, databases, etc. The computer centre premises are located in a 150 m2 hall with air conditioning (240 KW), technical floor and uninterruptible power supply (250 KVA) .