Flexin for three years: An update on AgResearch’s eResearch Infrastructure refresh with Flexible HPC

On the 9th of July 2021 AgResearch and NeSI signed a Memorandum of Understanding to work together as partners on areas of shared benefit, thus kickstarting our eResearch infrastructure refresh journey to replace our legacy HPC and storage environments with fit for purpose infrastructure delivered via HPE and NESI’s FlexiHPC platform.

Our task was ambitious, wanting a single platform for all AgResearch’s scientific data and compute needs beyond a traditional HPC cluster. Including proprietary windows compute environments and the amalgamation of several filesystems into one.

Fast forward to 2025, this whirlwind talk will cover off our journey as we navigated covid lockdowns, supply chain disruptions, countless sprint ceremonies, and data migrations. To deliver a platform that delivers value for our scientists. As well as the ups, downs, and  lessons we learned along the way.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Ben Taylor is the eResearch, Infrastructure and Security Manager at AgResearch with over 20 years of experience. By day (and sometimes by night), he juggles a range of responsibilities to ensure AgResearch’s researchers have the infrastructure and services they need to feed their ever-growing data appetite. For his sins, he also tries to balance this with the need to protect information and data. Easy right?

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For more information about the eResearch NZ / eRangahau Aotearoa conference, visit:
https://eresearchnz.co.nz/