ilifu – Research Cloud Infrastructure
Research cloud infrastructure, training and technical support for data-intensive science.
A primary goal of IDIA is to build capacity and expertise in data-intensive research at South African universities to support MeerKAT science projects. IDIA manages the astronomy component of the ilifu research cloud facility, which supports five of the eight MeerKAT Large Survey Projects and a broader community of researchers. ilifu, a NICIS Tier-2 data intensive research cloud facility, provides both compute and storage resources and offers infrastructure, platform, software and support as a service.
The ilifu computing facility, which consists of over 4000 processor cores and 14 PB of storage, is managed through the open source OpenStack cloud platform. This allows both dedicated services and infrastructure-as-a-service solutions. Software environments are encapsulated using Singularity containers so that reproducible software stacks can be shared across users and projects.
Additionally, ilifu is used to support data-intensive development initiatives, such as data schools and hackathons, across Africa. Read more about these initiatives in the Development section of this website.
Training and Support
Special technical support is provided for the developers and users of all the major MeerKAT data processing pipelines, such as OxKAT, Caracal and the in-house developed IDIA pipeline ProcessMeerKAT. ilifu training workshops are hosted twice a year, aimed at both new and experienced users.
Access
User documentation for the ilifu facility can be found using the link below, including the process of registering an account on Ilifu.
View the ilifu User Documentation Visit the ilifu Website
