This documentation covers the campus shared Interactive Data Analytics Service (IDAS), provided by ITS-RS (Information Technology Services - Research Services). IDAS supports large-scale and collaborative data analytics using interactive tools such as RStudio, JupyterLab, and Jupyter Notebook. The programming languages that are currently available on IDAS are Python, R, and Julia. Users will benefit from high-performance computing resources while performing their interactive data analytic tasks.

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IDAS plans for the future

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Milestones

This section provides a summary of the improvements and updates that may be the most visible to IDAS users. For a complete list of service updates, please visit our https://uiowa.atlassian.net/wiki/x/cIaPB.

2025

January 9, 2025 - IDAS moved to a new data center networking, which is expected to provide better performance. Updates made to JupyterHub, infrastructure nodes, and all worker nodes. Databases relocated to dedicated hosts, resulting in performance improvements.

2024

November 26, 2024 - Added 16 GPUs to IDAS. These are NVIDIA L40S, each with 48GB GPU memory.
August 14, 2024 - Updated NVIDIA GPU drivers to support the latest CUDA versions
May 22, 2024 - Updated the Server Options form in the Research instance. The form will auto-populate information from the user’s last IDAS session.
March 23, 2024 - Added new GPUs: 8 NVIDIA A30 and 12 NVIDIA L4. Added 5 new-generation compute nodes with faster CPU.

For updates made before 2024, please click the sections below to expand and view.

December 29, 2023 - Migration of home directories of IDAS research users. Users will not notice any difference in using their IDAS home directories. The new storage system will give more consistent performance, free up compute resources for users, and streamline future maintenance.
November 1, 2023 - Updated IDAS URL to https://idas.uiowa.edu/ for consistent branding. Research users will be automatically redirected to this new URL when they log in from the previous URL. No changes will be made to class instances until after the end of the Fall 2023 semester.
August 11, 2023 - Added Python 3.11, R 4.3.1, and Julia 1.9.2. Updated JupyterHub. Ceased support and maintenance for Python 3.7 since it reached end of life in June 2023.

December 30, 2022 - Added R 4.2.2, Python 3.10, and Julia 1.8.3. Default interface changed from Jupyter Notebook to JupyterLab.
May 18, 2022 - Added new GPUs: 4 NVIDIA A10 and 4 NVIDIA A30. Added 2 new-generation compute nodes with faster CPU. Updated JupyterHub
February 9, 2022 - Added Julia 1.7.1

August 12, 2021 - Added R 4.1.1 and Julia 1.6.2. Memory limit of research instance raised to 512GB.
January 7, 2021 - Added Python 3.9. Updated JupyterHub, JupyterLab, and Jupyter Notebook

August 13, 2020 - Added Python 3.7 and 3.8; R 4.0.2; Julia 1.3.1, 1.4.2, and 1.5.0. Added 4 additional GPUs.
April 1, 2020 - Memory limit of research instance raised to 256GB.
March 17, 2020 - RStudio Classroom moved to a multi-server environment. Sessions are now evenly distributed across all nodes. Doubled the amount of compute resources available to RStudio Classroom.

December 26, 2019 - RStudio available for research use. Access to LSS shares and Argon home directories available
August 19, 2019 - Initial functionality launch
June 21, 2019 - Research pilot launch
June 4, 2019 - Classroom pilot launch
April 8, 2019 - Completed stakeholder engagements and requirements analysis
February 4, 2019 - Project kick-off meeting

Contact

Cody B Johnson and Giang Rudderham at research-computing@uiowa.edu. Support is generally available Monday - Friday, 8 AM - 5 PM, excluding University holidays. To find specific dates for University holidays, please see the Academic Calendar.

HPC Documentation

Interactive Data Analytics Service Documentation

Analytics

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IDAS plans for the future

Milestones

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