SS Draft - Attachment 6 - Draft Exhibit A - NOAA GFDL Computing and Data Storage Resources

DRAFT DOCUMENT

NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dynamics
Laboratory (GFDL) and RDHPCS
Computing and Data Storage Resources

AF

T

Located on the Forrestal Campus in Princeton, New Jersey, the NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL) serves as a primary hub for advanced Earth system modeling, climate simulation, and atmospheric research. Below is an overview of the Research and Development High-Performance Computing System (RDHPCS) computing infrastructure, data storage architectures, and analysis systems located at or directly associated with the Princeton site.

1. Post-Processing and Analysis Cluster (PPAN)

While off-site RDHPCS supercomputing systems handle massive numerical integrations, on-site computing at GFDL in Princeton focuses on post-processing, climate diagnostics, data analysis, and workflow automation via the Post-Processing and Analysis (PPAN / Pan) cluster.

Cluster Architecture

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●​ Server Scale: Composed of 164 Dell compute nodes.
●​ Processors & Memory: Features multiple generations of Intel processors (ranging from Sandy Bridge to Ice Lake architecture) with host memory configurations between 48 GB and 2 TB RAM per server.
●​ Interactive Analysis Hosts: Provides approximately 60 dedicated interactive analysis nodes equipped with high-performance filesystem interfaces to allow scientists to inspect and manipulate large datasets interactively.

Node Fast-scratch Space

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●​ Fast-Scratch File System (/vftmp): Local fast-scratch storage mounted on each analysis host ranging from 8 TB to 44 TB in capacity per node.

2. Storage Infrastructure & Data Hierarchy

GFDL's data hierarchy is tailored to manage massive Earth system model outputs, transitioning data seamlessly across online, high-performance, and archival tiers.

DRAFT DOCUMENT

Capacity &
Characteristics

Primary Use Case

Manufacturer,
Software & Type
Info

User Home
Directories (/home
& /nbhome)

10 GB default quota

per user; daily
backups for /home,
weekly for /nbhome
(no-backup home).

Scripts, user
environments,
source code, and
lightweight
configuration files.

Unified NFS
Network Storage
(Dell EMC
Enterprise NAS
Storage / Linux
NFS).

High-Performance
Work (/work)

Multi-petabyte
parallel disk storage.
High bandwidth
output target.

Active simulation
runs, staging area for
data analysis, and
raw output
processing.

Parallel File System

(POSIX / GPFS &

Lustre
High-Performance
SAN/NAS storage
arrays).

Tape-Backed