RDF Technical Assessment Form
Instructions:
1. Complete Section 1 below as fully as possible. If you have any questions or require
clarification, please contact the RDF helpdesk (support@rdf.ac.uk).
2. Return the completed form (as a Word document) to the RDF helpdesk
(support@rdf.ac.uk) along with a draft of your Case for Support.
3. The RDF support team will complete Section 2 and will contact you directly for more
information if it is required. This may take up to 10 days from receipt of the
completed form.
4. The support team will return the fully completed form to you so you can include it in
your application.
5. You can apply for RDF resources for a maximum of 3 years.
Completion of this form implies permission for user details to be stored in the Service
Partners’ and Research Councils’ databases and to be used for mailing, accounting,
reporting and other administrative purposes.
RDF Technical Assessment Form | www.rdf.ac.uk
Page 1 of 7
Section 1: Resources (To be completed by the applicant).
1. Project Information.
1.1. Project Title: [Enter project title]
1.2. Application Type: [Grant/Other]
1.3. Funding Body: [e.g. EPSRC/NERC/STFC/BBSRC/MRC/ESRC]
1.4. PI Name and Contact Details.
Name: [Please Complete Table]
Department:
Institution:
Position Held:
Address:
Postcode:
e-Mail:
Telephone:
Nationality:
1.5. Contact details for application (if different from PI above)
Name: [Please Complete Table]
Department:
Institution:
Position Held:
Address:
Postcode:
e-Mail:
Telephone:
Nationality:
1.6. Proposed start date of RDF use: [Enter start date]
1.7. Project length (months) of RDF use: [Enter project length, max. 3 years]
RDF Technical Assessment Form | www.rdf.ac.uk
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2. Previous Use of Data Analysis Resources.
2.1. Are you an existing RDF user? [Yes/No]
2.2. Which other data analysis services (including using HPC services to analyse data)
have you used?
[Enter list of other DA services]
2.3. If you have used other data analysis services, please provide a brief summary of
the size of resource used, mode of access, and analysis tools that were used
[Enter summary of previous service usage]
RDF Technical Assessment Form | www.rdf.ac.uk
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3. RDF Software and Support Requirements.
3.1. Summary of analysis software requirements.
What are the main analysis and data transfer tools you will be using? A description of
available analysis and transfer software on the RDF on is given at:
http://www.rdf.ac.uk/documentation/user-guide/cluster.php
Please provide links to codes/software not presently available on the RDF.
[Enter list of codes with links to descriptions if possible]
Software requirements (e.g. compilers, libraries, tools):
[Enter list of software requirements to support your use of the RDF]
Support Requirements
How do you plan to support your transfer and analysis on the RDF (delete as
appropriate)?
Expertise in your
group
RDF Staff Support
Other (please
specify)
Yes/No/NA
Yes/No/NA
Please summarise any other support requirements for this project:
[Enter any other support requirements. For example, specific network requirements for
transferring data, high-memory requirements for data analysis]
RDF Technical Assessment Form | www.rdf.ac.uk
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4. Proposed Use of RDF Resources.
The minimum allocation unit of storage space on the RDF is 1TB. The notional cost of RDF
access is £150 per TB per year of access.
The RDF Data Analytic Cluster supports analysis of data on the RDF. Full technical details of
the system can be found on the RDF website at:
http://www.rdf.ac.uk/documentation/user-guide/cluster.php
Cluster usage requirements should be specified in CPUh.
4.1. Storage space requested
Storage space requested: [Enter disk space requested in whole TB]
Notional Cost: [Enter notional cost in £. (Note this is 150 x TB x years.)]
4.2. Justification for storage space requested
[Please provide a brief description of how you calculated the total storage space requested
in section 4.1 above.]
4.3. CPU time required for data analysis
CPUh requested for data analysis: [Enter CPUh required on the RDF DAC]
4.4. Details of CPU time required for data analysis
[Please provide a brief description of how you calculated the CPUh requested in section 4.3
above. This should include a breakdown of the number of jobs, the number of cores used by
each job and the length of each job.]
RDF Technical Assessment Form | www.rdf.ac.uk
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5. Data Management and Transfer
This section asks some basic questions about how you will manage and transfer the data
you wish to store and analyse on the RDF. You may find the advice in the RDF Data
Management Guide useful in answering these questions, see:
http://www.rdf.ac.uk/documentation/data-management/
7.1 How much data (and how many files) do you plan to transfer onto the RDF?
[Enter the estimated total size in TB size and number of files.]
7.1 How much data (and many files) do you plan to generate on the RDF?
[Enter the estimated total size in TB size and number of files.]
7.3 Please provide a brief description of how the data will be organised (including an
estimate of the upper limit of the number of files in a single directory).
[Describe briefly your mechanism for organising the data you will upload/produce on the
RDF.]
7.4 What percentage of the data produced on the RDF do you expect to transfer to an
external location?
[Enter estimated percentage]
7.6 How do you plan to transfer data onto/off the RDF?
[Please describe the mechanism you will use to transfer data to/from RDF from/to external
sites for further analysis or archive, plus how you plan to remove data when your RDF
access ends. Please also state the sites that you will be transferring data to. You should also
state roughly the amount of data that will be transferred in each transfer instance (i.e. how
will the transfers be batched up).]
RDF Technical Assessment Form | www.rdf.ac.uk
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Section 2: Technical Assessment (To be completed by CSE
team).
Date Received by CSE: [Enter received date]
Is the application, as outlined above, suitable for access to the RDF service? Yes / No
Comments:
Do the applicants have the technical expertise required for the proposed work?
Yes/No
Are the requirements specified technically suitable for the RDF?
Yes/No
Is the storage size requested reasonable and has it been justified?
Yes/No
Are the DAC compute resources requested reasonable and have they been
justified?
Yes/No
Is the data management and transfer plan reasonable and technically sound?
Yes/No
Name: [Enter name]
Position: [Enter job title]
Date: [Enter date completed]
RDF Technical Assessment Form | www.rdf.ac.uk
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