ARC is a uniquely complex field - highly specialized, with extreme requirements of scale and performance, widely diverse user groups, and a huge variety of workloads. Alongside all this complexity comes the need to balance stable operations of ARC systems with periodic major refreshes that often substantially change the landscape. The iterative workflow of modern software development, the operational rigour of enterprise operational practices, and the unfettered creative energy of true experimental systems design all offer part of a solution, but how does a highly effective ARC team balance them?

Join UVic Research Computing Services team members Veronica Augustin, Research Project Manager, and Jeff Albert, Manager and Architect of ARC Infrastructure, to hear how the team that operates Canada's largest research cloud and ARC projects for many UVic and partner research groups manages its work and balances its priorities.
 

Jeff Albert

Jeff Albert

Manager and Architect, Advanced Research Computing Infrastructure, University of Victoria

Jeff Albert is the Manager and Architect of Advanced Research Computing Infrastructure at the University of Victoria. Applying over 20 years of experience in higher education and research computing in roles at every level from Junior Helpdesk Analyst to Senior ARC Systems Administrator, Jeff leads a team of the University's most senior technical staff to design, build, and operate ARC systems at every scale. This all-star team of experts has created the Arbutus Cloud, a partnership with the Digital Research Alliance of Canada producing an on-premise OpenStack Community Cloud for researchers - the largest in Canada, providing over 44,000 vCPUs, 15PB of storage, and more than 100 vGPUs. The team has also created the world's first ATLAS Tier-2 site operated on Kubernetes, large-scale production Kubernetes clusters to support the work of the Canadian Astronomical Data Centre, and many UVic- and partner-facing ARC infrastructure projects.

Summit Speaker

Veronica Augustin

Project Manager, University of Victoria

Veronica is a PMP-certified project manager, Scrum Alliance certified Scrum Master and Product Owner and a certified life coach. Over the last seven years, she has led Research Infrastructure projects and cultivated broader portfolio management processes with the UVic RCS team using agile, waterfall and hybrid approaches. In addition to higher ed, she has experience in website design and custom software projects in the Indigenous Technology space where reconciliation and data sovereignty create incredible opportunities for technologists and leaders. She is passionate about creating environments where teams can work equitably, invite diverse perspectives and honour differences. She leverages coaching strategies to mobilize teams that take ownership and delivery high quality results, while humbly learning from expert colleagues along the way. 

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Slide Deck

Technology Track

Session Format
Speaker Presentation (45 mins)