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Infrastructure

Introduction

Current infrastructure charges use a two-tier system:

The CIRA revolving account (where these fees are collected) was originally established to provide CIRA’s advanced computing platform to internal researchers who must be on the cutting edge of technology to carry out the Institute’s mission to conduct interdisciplinary research in the atmospheric sciences. The fee system was established and paid for directly by these users. The two tiers are both separate from the basic support paid for by CIRA’s overhead return that support general computing not associated with specific research projects.

 

Why change?

In view of today’s scrutiny of scientific proposals, it is increasingly more difficult to justify broad computer infrastructure support. More specific charges associated with the project itself are more transparent and thus desirable. It allows a more direct correspondence between the computing needs of a project and the charges to that proposal.

In addition, the University is under constant pressure to demonstrate that computing charges on research grants are indeed associated specifically with that research project and not part of the general support services that should be covered by returned overhead. Making this explicit in proposals will avoid ambiguities later.

 

The New Plan: Starting July 1, 2012

As discussed at our meeting, we will lower the infrastructure charge for all Fort Collins CIRA personnel to $224/month for the first year of implementation. Note that this number will adjust with inflation in out years. This fee pays for the ability to do high-end computing at CIRA.

This fee will pay for shared infrastructure needs that are essential for CIRA’s mandate to remain at the cutting edge of computing. Examples of this high end computing capacity over the last two years include the high speed internet backbone, the refurbishing (power and air conditioning) of the CIRA basement to house high speed computers, uninterrupted power supplied for large Linux servers, consulting services for high end computing solutions, monitoring of network traffic and server diagnostics to maintain 99+ percent performance, in-house developed hardware development expertise that provides fast, reliable, and less expensive scientific computer equipment, high-speed network, associated equipment, and service management including 10G firewall, router, multiple subnets, DNS, DHCP, switches, and fees to ACNS for network access, and central computer rooms with UPS, AC, and monitoring.

The higher rate was designed to cover specific hardware and systems support associated with research projects. Instead of paying the ”high” rate, we are now asking all PIs to explicitly account for their hardware and RA needs associated with those computing needs in their proposals. Historically, the average computing cost associated with modeling and satellite retrieval proposals is roughly 10% of the overall budget. As we transition from the old system to the new, you should plan to include roughly 10% of the total cost to computing. This will be budgeted directly into the proposal as a combination of hardware and Research Associate support for a member of the infrastructure team (M. Hiatt, S. Finley, etc). The Director will review each budget before signing off on proposals. You should be prepared to explain budgets that are significantly different from 10% (either higher or lower).

Hopefully, this guides us in the right direction, but changes will be slow and deliberate. We’re not going to abandon the excellent support everyone is currently receiving because of a change in accounting practices.

Now for a reality check

People usually are pretty good at estimating their hardware needs but uniformly think they need far less support than they really do. That’s because all we need is for someone to set up the username and password, and then everything runs just fine. Disks never crash, computers never self-destruct in the middle of the project, and software that used to work never ever just stops working for some unknown reason. Going forward, each proposal will be reviewed not only by our Finance Team and Proposal Coordinators but also by the Director to ensure adequate resources have been included in each proposal budget.

How to Proceed

  1. While we are fully aware of the law of proposal deadlines (it states that no proposal shall ever be done until the very last second), we would really like all PIs to submit Proposal Notification Forms (http://129.82.108.250/forms/proposal_notification/) to the Proposal Coordinators at least two weeks before the proposal is due. This ensures better results as our Coordinators keep up with the ever-increasing volume of activity and the growing list of required elements for each submission.
  2. Include infrastructure charges of $224/mo per person for all personnel located in Fort Collins.
  3. Look at your project specific computing needs in terms of both hard- and software. 10% of the total cost is roughly average if you think you have a proposal with average computing requirements but increase or decrease as warranted by proposals. Please send me a little note very early if you plan to deviate significantly (up or down).
  4. If you would like the RA support to come from the central RA pool, please use a rate of $85,875 for salary to represent the average of the salaries.
  5. Projects that are already funded will continue to use the old system of rates until they are concluded.