IT at D-PHYS

IT at D-PHYS#

This ~1 h introduction is targeted at new members of D-PHYS and IGP/D-BAUG and is meant to familiarize you with the following three topics:

  • Introduce the IT Services Group (ISG) as the primary go-to place for all IT-related questions

  • Give a general idea of “how IT works at D-PHYS”, what there is and whom to ask for help

  • Introduce Basics of computing environments for scientists lecture modules for advanced topics

IT Services Group (ISG)#

D-PHYS, like several other departments of ETH Zurich, employs a group of IT professionals that support the researchers and departemental staff in all IT-related matters. We are currently 8 members (usually plus one apprentice), specializing in Linux, Windows and macOS on both the server and workstation side. We run all servers of the department and offer a long list of IT services.

We love solving complicated problems, so please don’t hesitate to get in touch if you’re got any question regarding computing. The easiest way to contact our helpdesk is via Matrix chat or our ticketing system. We provide a large documentation repository describing all aspects of our work.

How IT works at D-PHYS#

The players#

Aside from ISG, there are at least two more service providers in D-PHYS’ IT landscape: local IT representatives in the research groups and Informatikdienste (ID).

Since the various research groups at D-PHYS and IGP have vastly diverging computing requirements and work them out differently, many of them have some sort of local IT representative (usually a PhD student) who serves as the first point of contact in IT matters and also acts as a liaison to us (ISG). While we certainly don’t discourage each and every department member to contact us in case of questions, it’s often a very good idea to consult your IT rep first just to keep things consistent in the group.

On the other side of the spectrum, there’s the central Informatikdienste (ID) of ETH Zurich. Traditionally D-PHYS IT has been quite independent from ID, so for most members of the department, the list of ID services is rather short:

  • Basic networking (wired and wifi, VPN). Higher protocol levels are handled by us.

  • Email - while every member of D-PHYS has an @ethz.ch email address, most people forward it to their @phys.ethz.ch account and use that one. IGP/D-BAUG uses @geod.baug.ethz.ch addresses on Exchange (ID).

  • IT Shop, the ETH-wide software/license portal.

  • Printing, ISG serves as the liaison to ID’s pia printing system.

Everything else (and there’s a lot..) is handled by ISG.

Accounts#

One of the side effects of having multiple IT service providers: multiple accounts. Both ETH and D-PHYS issue an account to access their services. The first one you’ll encounter when starting your ETH career will ususally be the ETH account, so we try to use the same login (passwords can be different of course). Furthermore, the ETH account comes with two different passwords (one for network-related services (“Radius password”) and one for the rest (“LDAP password”)). For full details please refer to our documentation.

Main IT services provided by ISG#

While it is virtually impossible to list every service we offer, we do try to cover the highlights. Here’s an excerpt:

Managed Workstations#

We offer fully managed workstations for all three major operating systems: Windows, Linux and macOS. We take care of both software installation and updates, so you can concentrate on your work. This makes them a good choice for many office computers (lab not so much). Self-managed computers are always possible (and often needed, for example as measurement PCs), but we can’t support them on the same level as managed workstations due to their sheer number (~ 1000 in D-PHYS).

Storage and backup#

One of our most important services is storage and backup. For group shares and personal home directories, we run an enterprise-grade SAN (currently 3.6 PB) plus the equivalent amount for backups. Your home directory and all group shares you have access to are automatically mounted on all Managed Workstations and can be accessed via SMB from non-managed machines. A backup of all data is taken each night and kept for at least 30 days. You even have direct access to all your backup data. We also provide a backup solution for non-managed laptops and lab PCs.

Please note that all your research data should go into a group share, not your personal home directory. Your colleagues will be thankful.

Email#

We run a mail server with full spam and virus filtering and all relevant protocols and a powerful webmail interface. In addition, we have a groupware solution for collaboration that synchronizes with most calendars and mobile devices.
@phys.ethz.ch and @ethz.ch email accounts can be used independently or be forwarded in either direction.
@phys.ethz.ch accounts come in various flavors and can be migrated to collaborator status after leaving ETH.

Network#

To ensure a stable and secure network environment at D-PHYS, all computers connecting to the wired network have to be initially registered with their MAC address.
Required information:

  • MAC address (obviously…)

  • two D-PHYS accounts that serve as primary contact persons

  • type of machine (desktop, laptop, oscilloscope…)

  • operating system (Linux, Windows, macOS…)

ETH wifi is managed by ID and requires an ETH Radius login.

Helpdesk and support#

We operate a helpdesk that rotates within ISG on a weekly basis. You can reach us by

Our ticket system allows us to dispatch incoming requests and keep track of follow-ups.
Tons of documentation and many tutorials can be found in our readme.
Our website features a blog that contains service announcements. In order to stay informed, subscribing to our newsletter (very low traffic) is highly recommended.

Printing#

ETH offers the campus-wide PIA printing system. We provide documentation.

Web services#

We host and maintain a wide variety of web services for the department, e.g.

Computing resources#

We operate a number of public Linux login hosts and a Windows Terminal Server for everyone to use. While it doesn’t make sense to run HPC clusters on the level of D-PHYS, we collaborate with our colleagues of ID SIS for cluster usage. Many research groups have access to those resources. We also maintain a number of number crunchers for interactive workflows in different groups.

Data protection and privacy#

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As mentioned earlier, all your research data should be stored on our group shares - for at least three reasons:

  • it’s your most valuable research data!

  • ETH regulations require a copy to be stored on ETH servers

  • we take care of regular backups

You might be tempted to use external cloud services because they’re “so convenient”, but please always keep in mind that these companies then have full access to your data! That’s why we try to offer local equivalents whenever possible: Matrix (with LaTeX support!) instead of Slack, Polybox instead of Dropbox, our mail server instead of Gmail…

Also take a moment to establish a good password management strategy.

Make sure to explore the other exciting topics on our IT security website.

Consulting and special projects#

Bleeding edge research often requires innovative and creative IT solutions. Please come talk to us whenever you’re facing a non-standard problem. We love those! Some examples of recent projects for/together with research groups:

  • InfluxDB + Grafana for lab environment monitoring

  • Raspi-based measurement setup on top of Prime Tower

  • Remote management for D-PHYS’ liquid helium system

Some pieces of advice from us. Pretty please with sugar on top.#

  • consult our readme, most of your questions have already been answered.

  • when in doubt, come visit and discuss with us!

  • when creating a ticket, please provide the necessary information (contact details, name/MAC address of your machine, operating system + version, detailed description of the problem…).

  • do not create millions of small files on the file server. This will waste a lot of space and kill performance. Create tgz or zip archives instead.

  • do no run computational jobs on network storage! Every machine has a local scratch folder to hold temporary data while the simulations are running. End results go to the group share.

Where to go from here?#

This introduction should have given you a first glance of the IT service landscape at D-PHYS. If you’d like to learn about more advanced topics, we currently offer the following modules in our “Basics of computing environments for scientists” lecture series:

Our colleagues of ID Scientific IT Services also offer a range of courses and workshops (lecture notes here) that might be of interest.

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