IBM Storage Scale, perviously Spectrum Scale, formerly GPFS
IBM Storage Scale, previously called IBM Spectrum Scale, previously called GPFS, is a proprietary parallel filesystem, developed originally for handling large multimedia files on a cluster of networked computers.
For some years the School maintained a small (~5TB) GPFS scratch filesystem for researchers. However, the free-to-use version could not be used on SL7 at the time (it's no longer possible to obtain driver support) so we discontinued the service.
If you are interested in using IBM Storage Scale, and you have very deep pockets, then please let us know.
Course Software
Teaching Software on DICE
It is very important that software is installed, tested and distributed as early as possible before the start of teaching, so as to avoid any compatibility problems with DICE. We preserve versions of key software, once finalized, throughout the session (and until after any laboratory examinations) to ensure that students keep a consistent environment.
Request Tracker
To keep track of Computing Support requests we use a system called Request Tracker (or "RT"). You can use it to see your requests.
How to see your requests
See your computing support requests at this address:
This will show you everything that's been recorded for each of your requests, including comments and computing staff discussions which aren't usually mailed to you.
Using MariaDB (and MySQL) on DICE
DICE carries copies of MariaDB, the modern, open fork of popular RDBMS MySQL on most PCs.
But if you're looking for our managed database service, please see the PostgreSQL page.
Licensed Software
Licensed software on DICE
Some of this software is also available on self-managed machines or at home - see below.
Numerical Computing
This page has been incorporated into the GPU and cluster computing pages.
Virtualisation
For those buying servers, we strongly recommend you consider virtualisation when provisioning new services. It saves on the proliferation of hardware, so is environmentally friendly. Depending on application our desktops can support a number of virtual hosts without any significant overhead. Each could be running services that traditionally would have been run on dedicated physical hardware. Running a virtual service on your own DICE desktop can also help to get a service going without buying new hardware.
Webots on self-managed machines
Webots is a Robotics simulator used for teaching and research in the School.
The software is freely downloadable from the Cyberbotics website and has been released as open-source software. For the purposes of teaching make sure you download a version appropriate to your platform from the archive matching the version currently installed on DICE (you can check this by typing
Teaching
This is a non-exhaustive list of services supporting teaching:
- Course software
- Using the course work submission system
- Webmark marking forms
- DPMT and other projects resources
- Laboratory Examinations
- Learning Technology resources
Also try the "teaching" topic in the "Choose a topic" menu to the right of this window.