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Computing and Data Centre - Systems
AWI’s IT demands are manifold, including everyone’s basic needs to get their daily work done in a collaborative way, support for acquisition, storage, management, and processing of both scientific and administrative data, and specific requirements like high performance computing and artificial intelligence / machine learning applications. The Systems Branch of the Computing and Data Centre of Alfred Wegener Institute is in charge of all infrastructures and services that are required to fulfill these needs. We are organized as follows:
Support
We offer support for the centrally provided IT services.
Support is available to employees, cooperation partners and guests via the hotline and by e-mail. In addition, we offer employees the option of creating their requests via our service portal.
The hotline can be reached by dialing +49-471-4831-1403.
Monday - Friday 8:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.
Please note the operating hours:
Monday - Thursday 8:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m.
Friday 8:00 a.m - 3:00 p.m.
To contact us by e-mail, please use the address helpdesk(at)awi.de.
The service portal is only available to AWI employees.
Storage & Server
The Storage & Server group maintains the bare metal for storage and servers. These are mainly:
- the online storage (Isilon) for Linux and Windows Servers and Clients with about 3.5 PB at Bremerhaven and 2.6 PB at Potsdam,
- the tape storage for archiving and backup (HSM) with about 7 PB in two separate buildings at Bremerhaven,
- dozens of ESXi hosts for server virtualization at Bremerhaven, Potsdam, and other AWI locations,
- the HPC hardware (ollie) with about 10,000 CPUs und 1.5 PB of parallel storage (in cooperation with the IT Computing group).
Core IT Services
The Core IT Services group provides basic services for the day-to-day work of science and administration. These include:
- a global network: from building to building, from site to site, from Polarstern to Neumayer III Station,
- AWI-wide identity management and the provision of staff and guests with credentials and affiliations,
- the provision of mail, calendars, wikis, ticketing systems, printing services, and other collaboration tools,
- video conferencing software and systems for meetings and conferences,
- database systems for storing research data and many others.
Remote Locations
AWI isn’t located at Bremerhaven only, but as well at Potsdam and a number of island and remote locations, including various research platforms. The Remote Locations group extends all of our services to these places, like Helgoland, Sylt, Oldenburg. Spitsbergen, Antarctica, ships and airplanes etc. Our activities cover all necessary parts of IT infrastructure: network, storage and compute servers, desktop PCs, laptops, printers, and support for scientific work in the lab and the field.
Apprenticeships
Every year, we offer up to three vocational apprenticeships to become a “Fachinformatiker/Fachinformatikerin”. More information (in German) can be found here:
Overarching Infrastructures
Research is shifting from an institute-centered towards a project-oriented approach that requires the participating centres and individuals to cooperate not only in terms of sharing ideas but as well IT resources. Data volumes have increased to amounts that effectively prohibit any copying and analyses must be performed in place. New scientific approaches call for joint exploration of multi-dimensional and multi-disciplinary data. Software is being developed and shared collaboratively. Neither of this can be accomplished without allowing mutual access to storage and compute resources, places for sharing and editing files and code, a fast, safe, and reliable network, and, of course, a common authentication and authorization framework. To this end, we contributed not only to the Helmholtz Data Federation (HDF, 2017-2021) but continue to cooperate with other centres within the Helmholtz Federated IT Services platform (HIFIS, 2020-2027) in building shared infrastructures for research and administration.
Head of Systems Branch
Matthias Werner
Deputy Head
Benny Bräuer
Support
Tobias Davidek
Storage & Server
Dr. Malte Thoma
Core IT-Services
Benny Bräuer
Remote Locations
Tobias Schmidt
Apprenticeships
Pia Schliefke