The NDPF is the collection of services that enabled high-throughput data processing at Nikhef

The Nikhef Data Processing Facility NDPF contains a range of computing and storage services, specifically targettign high-throughput and data intensive scientic research needs. Storage and compute are interconnected with high-speed links within our H234b data centre, which - being positioned literally on top of our NikhefHousing facility - is there connected with a range of network providers, of which the links through SURF carry most of our traffic. Private peerings with academic and selected national partners, such as other LHC Tier-1 sites, provide additional bandwidth and redundancy.

More than 12 000 compute cores, tens of GPU accelerators, connected to over 8 Petabyte of net storage capacity provide the basis for faster processing. The capability of this system is a result of balancing storage throughput to application-specific tuning of the compute hardware, built to match the algorithmic and processing choices made in our HEP and astroparticle physics applications. Hence, we deploy relatively ‘fat’ nodes, with plenty of memory and local ‘nVME’ storage space to support event merge jobs and caching of intermediate simulation results. Facility design starts at the application level!

Our own physics computing is of course one of the main use cases, but there are many more in the Dutch National e-Infrastructure. So our services also process other research data, and the facility design reflects this open, multi-domain character. The Nikhef network and the NDPF are a ‘research network with office enclaves’ - in contrast to many other institutional network designs.

The most visible element of the NDPF is probably the 12000+ core compute facility, linked with 1.2Tbit to approximately 12+ PByte high-speed distributed storage cluster running a combination of dCache and othe rnetworked storage systems. But there are also specialised systems for software development, integration testing, authentication and trust services, and network test systems. At our network edges, we peer with selected IP providers that host critical content for our research use cases, and with local eyeball networks.

Information on the current status is available on Status.io and on the EGI GOCDB status page   (authentication required)

The Nikhef NDPF is part of the Dutch National e-Infrastructure, coordinated by SURF. It offers high-throughput platform services (grid) and infrastructure access characterised by bottle-neck free interconnects and high retrieval performance. Nikhef NDPF operates an open private peering policy for data-intensive academic institutions.

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