4 ms·

curiously at the small chair I work, the professor goes against that flow and we do our small cluster all on our own. We also don't have much money (small), so

by fock 4y ago

curiously at the small chair I work, the professor goes against that flow and we do our small cluster all on our own. We also don't have much money (small), so dedicating probably half a year of state-funded PhD-time paid off (still quite academic around here) as we now have an environment newcomers can get work with in week 1. On top me and a colleague have a niche but interesting skillset pxe-booting a slurm cluster, running RoCE and NFS. Our softwaredistribution (as in "compiled sensibly"...) is arguably better than on some parts of the HPC-center (continent-wide academic TOP10 iirc) nearby. Also a first year PhD has some interest in that and will probably carry this on.

WJW 4y ago
I don't have a lot of insight in academic funding and I know the meme that PhDs don't get paid a lot, but is it really better to use presumably very highly trained PhDs to do the grunt work of systems administration rather than actual research? Honest question here, it just seems logical to hire dedicated technicians for the not-research work?
- fock 4y ago
  there is no money for dedicated techs nowadays. Also hiring a competent sysadmin to do on-prem HPC-Linux might prove challenging. And while it is grunt work sometimes (but more so is academic research in lab, which to 90% could be rationalized by a labtech...), it's not too stupid if the people programming the system know how the system works. Aside from racking severs, that's essentially what SRE does, no?
  - Moissanite 4y ago
    > hiring a competent sysadmin to do on-prem HPC-Linux might prove challenging Anecdata: I have 2 customers who have had open roles of this type for more than a year each. I'm pleased to report that they are edging their salary offers up into "reasonable" territory - but the fact remains that someone with that skillset would ordinarily be able to get paid twice as much at any of the 3 major clouds.
    - fock 4y ago
      yes, pay is obviously an issue (likely also for the HPC-center - though I would take a job if they agreed that I can hire/apprentice people properly (a lot of the grunts education focusses on clicking through menus and nothing more today...) and then they let me alone doing whatever the current people did. Probably a fast road to burnout though) Also noone is doing this then eventually (deskilling is real) and as I really don't want to work for any of the evil empires...

by fock 4y ago

WJW 4y ago

I don't have a lot of insight in academic funding and I know the meme that PhDs don't get paid a lot, but is it really better to use presumably very highly trained PhDs to do the grunt work of systems administration rather than actual research? Honest question here, it just seems logical to hire dedicated technicians for the not-research work?

fock 4y ago
there is no money for dedicated techs nowadays. Also hiring a competent sysadmin to do on-prem HPC-Linux might prove challenging. And while it is grunt work sometimes (but more so is academic research in lab, which to 90% could be rationalized by a labtech...), it's not too stupid if the people programming the system know how the system works. Aside from racking severs, that's essentially what SRE does, no?
- Moissanite 4y ago
  > hiring a competent sysadmin to do on-prem HPC-Linux might prove challenging Anecdata: I have 2 customers who have had open roles of this type for more than a year each. I'm pleased to report that they are edging their salary offers up into "reasonable" territory - but the fact remains that someone with that skillset would ordinarily be able to get paid twice as much at any of the 3 major clouds.
  - fock 4y ago
    yes, pay is obviously an issue (likely also for the HPC-center - though I would take a job if they agreed that I can hire/apprentice people properly (a lot of the grunts education focusses on clicking through menus and nothing more today...) and then they let me alone doing whatever the current people did. Probably a fast road to burnout though) Also noone is doing this then eventually (deskilling is real) and as I really don't want to work for any of the evil empires...