On Aug. 5, 2024, NASA announced the collaboration with UC Berkeley to bring the Savio Research Computing Cluster to Moffett Field, expanding beyond Earl Warren Hall. This significant partnership between Research IT and Berkeley IT is a result of several years of hard work and we are thrilled to share the arrival of this major milestone. As Berkeley Research CTO Ken Lutz noted, “Berkeley must offer advanced capabilities and capacity to researchers. Our teams meet every week to coordinate the onboarding of new faculty equipment. With this collaboration, we now have new colocation facilities plus a research partnership." The primary goal of Research IT and the UC Berkeley Data Center and Cloud Services project team is to deliver increased computing infrastructure for research. The Moffett Field Data Center project will realize this vision.
Following a high-level assessment in September 2021, it became clear that the status quo would not support Berkeley's research ambitions. Maintaining the aging Warren Hall data center and decentralized server closets would be costly and risky, threatening Berkeley’s research and administrative mission. Modernizing our infrastructure and enhancing efficiency, security, and innovation, this partnership with NASA signals a shift towards a more modern computing strategy. Recognizing and supporting the increasingly important role that high-performance computing, machine learning, and AI have in conducting research across all disciplines at Berkeley, this partnership strengthens our ability to provide cutting-edge facilities in support of our faculty, students, and staff. The development of offsite data center colocation also delivers a key component of Berkeley's "three pillar" infrastructure strategy
As Berkeley CTO Bill Allison remarked, "Berkeley faculty are pushing to advance the frontiers of knowledge across all disciplines, which means that today the University has an insatiable demand for advanced computing and expertise. There is no longer a one-size-fits-all solution. Our computing partnership with NASA is a critical collaboration that foreshadows the larger, growing strategic relationship between our two institutions.”
Many thanks to our sponsors and all the cross-functional teams involved in the initiative:
Executive Sponsors
- Marc Fisher, Vice Chancellor for Administration
- Kathy Yelick, Vice Chancellor for Research
- Oliver O’Reilly, Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education
- Shawna Dark, Chief Academic Technology Officer & Assistant Vice Provost
- Tracy Schroeder, AVC for IT & CIO
Initiative Owners
- Bill Allison, Chief Technology Officer
- Sally McGarrahan, Project Sponsor, AVC for Facilities Services
Steering Committee Members (in addition to those listed above)
- Dan Feitelberg, Vice Chancellor, Finance & Chief Financial Officer
- Benjamin Hermalin, Exec Vice Chancellor & Provost
- Anthony Joseph, Professor, EECS, and Campus Cyber Risk Executive
- John Kubiatowicz, Professor, EECS and Chair Academic Senate Computing and Information Technology Committee
- Amy Gardner, Executive Director, University Business Partnerships & Services
- Elizabeth Brashers, Chief of Staff to the Vice Chancellor for Research
- Dave Browne, Executive Director of Campus IT Infrastructure
- Diane Coppini, Director of Engineering and Technical Services
- Eric Fraser, Assistant Dean, Director of IT - College of Engineering
- Ken Lutz, Chief Research Technology Officer & Director, Research IT
- Terence Phuong, Executive Director of Business Operations and CFO
- Mira Roseman, Senior Project Manager
Research IT & Berkeley IT Team Members
- Robert Amos, Cloud Operations Manager
- Charron Andrus, Associate Chief Information Security Officer
- Jon Bates, Senior Project Manager
- Andres Carrasco, Senior Project Manager
- Johnny Dunn, Data Center Facility Manager
- Karen Fernlser, HPC Engineer
- Angela Ford, Executive Director of the Sponsored Project Office
- Jake Harwood, Senior Information Security Manager
- Erik Latrope, Principal Network Engineer
- Isaac Orr, Senior Manager of Network Services
- Rita Rosenthal, Director of Communications, Berkeley IT
- Sean Schluntz, Network Engineering and Specialized Services Manager
- Faye Snowden, Director of the Technology Program Office, Berkeley IT
- Walter Stokes, Data & Platform Services Director
- Gary Jung, BRC High-Performance Computing Manager
- John White, HPC Systems Engineer
- Ignacio Yanez, Data Center Manager
Special thanks to
- Russell Chung, Chief Procurement Officer, Procurement Services
- Gabriel Gonzalez, CIO at Berkeley Law (and previously Berkeley IT as interim CIO) who shepherded us through the signing of the deal with NASA
- Steve Aguirre (retired), Data Center Manager, Berkeley IT
Contact
If you have questions about the Moffett computing project or partnership with NASA please contact Bill Allison (wallison@berkeley.edu) or Ken Lutz (lutz@berkeley.edu).