BDAIRR

Big Data handling AI and Robotics for Research

Based in the North of the Netherlands, the Center for Information Technology (CIT) at the University of Groningen is a leading international center in the field of IT. Decades of experience in providing a robust infrastructure to researchers enables us to deliver innovative solutions and a solid basis to work on.

Large national and international projects such as EUCLID (astronomy, highly distributed processing), Lifelines (medical, sensitive data) and LOFAR (astronomy, big data) rely on our expertize and secure data infrastructures which are brought together in BDAIRR - Big Data handling AI and Robotics for Research.

BDAIRR consists of

Three fully equipped data centers

Three fully equipped data centers with a total capacity of 1100 m2 with abundant (partially green) power provisioning (1.4MW capacity, with the possibility to expand to 2MW). A new state of the art green (HPC-) data center (the Coenraad Bron Center) was opened in early 2022 to support the ever growing demand for computing services.

A dedicated database Infrastructure

A dedicated database infrastructure, providing cutting-edge performance and reliability.

Excellent access (100 Gbps) from SURF

Excellent access (100 Gbps) from the national academic network (SURF), with the possibility of using high speed light paths for dedicated services.

Large scale data storage facilities

State of the art, on line and near line, large scale data storage facilities including protocols for secure research data storage. Application servers are located in the same network as the high performance storage to support IO intensive processing.

High end scalable HPC clusters

Several high end scalable HPC clusters including support for scientific programming and AI/data science.

Innovation Lab (ILSE)

Innovation Lab (ILSE) for testing and development of AI and HPC-infrastructure.

EESSI/MultiXscale platform

Founders and co developers of the EESSI/MultiXscale platform for scientific software for multiple CPU-architectures.

Since 2012

The BDAIRR infrastructure has been up and running since 2012 and used by different projects in the fields of astronomy, ai, computer science, and medical sciences (genomic/proteomics). Over the past decade, we have continuously developed and adapted the infrastructure and our services to changing needs.

Our HPC cluster is the largest compute facility at an individual Dutch university and is proud of their long history of supercomputing, as the first Dutch university supercomputer was also found in Groningen.

Research IT & Data Support

Our research support has a data centric approach with a high-end infrastructure and a multidisciplinary data science support team. Together with researchers we create tailormade Virtual Research Environments based on the flexible building blocks listed below. Additionally, research data management services (e.g. iRODS), virtual research workspaces and data visualization facilities are offered.