Spam, spam, spam
by John Lalande
Over the last few weeks, the Technical Computing group has fielded questions from our SSEC co-workers about the increased volume of junk mail (a.k.a. 'spam'), and what TC is doing about it.
SSEC's mail server processes over 30,000 email messages per day. All incoming email is scanned for viruses and reviewed by a spam filter. Virus writers and spammers are in a constant cat-and-mouse game with companies that produce anti-virus and spam filtering software, so there is often an ebb and flow in the volume of spam and virus email you may see in your inbox. No email filtering system is perfect, and we err on the side of not generating "false positives," which would send legitimate email to your spam folder. When there are spikes in spam and virus emails, there's usually not much we can do about it besides wait for the anti-virus and anti-spam software makers to catch up and provide updated software.
We understand that junk mail is annoying, and will continue to try to improve our junk mail and virus filtering where we can. If you are receiving an unusually large number of junk mail or virus messages (e.g., dozens per day in your Inbox), please stop by room 439 or email unix.admin@ssec.wisc.edu. We will check your email account to make sure spam filtering is working properly. If spam filtering is properly configured for your account (e.g., you have a junk mail folder and new messages are being delivered to it), we ask that you just go ahead and delete junk mail from your Inbox when you see it.
SSEC @ SC13
The annual Supercomputing conference was held in Denver November 17-22. Several members of the Technical Computing group attended, as well as Heath Skarlupka from the PEATE group, Allen Huang, Bormin Huang and Jarno Mielikainen.
Scott gave a presentation about the evolution of storage technology here at SSEC, from simple Network Attached Storage (NAS) solutions to the current state of the art distributed file systems such as Lustre. He also discussed our test results and experience using Lustre on ZFS and participated in a panel discussion on the challenges associated with "big data" applications and installations.
Scott Nolin describes the evolution of storage technology at SSEC.
Scott Nolin participating in the "Big Data: What is it REALLY About" panel discussion
hosted by Dell and InsideHPC.
You can read more about our Lustre on ZFS research in the October issue of From Orbit.
TC also toured a containerized data center at the University of Colorado-Boulder. This containerized data center hosts a large supercomputer, "JANUS" that is a joint project of UC-Boulder, UC-Denver and the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). As our server rooms here at SSEC grow closer to their maximum capacity, a containerized data center such as UC-Boulder's may be a way to accommodate further growth.
UC-Boulder's containerized data center & JANUS supercomputer.
