SSC - Course of the competition

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The SSC will be conducted in multiple steps/phases which are described in more detail below:

Teams application

cf. SCC - Application

Sponsor application

Sponsors interested to support the competition or teams but have no own team yet can apply as long as the condition stated in SSC - Conditions & Rules are met.

Team Selection

cf. SCC - Application

Kick-Off and Onboarding phase

A Kick-off meeting will be conducted with all to:

1. Onboard the teams in general (administrative)
2. Explain the standard tasks/benchmarks/applications to be executed
3. Reveal the secret tasks that need to be completed
4. Provide an overview of the used system in the FTP - hardware composition, infrastructure components, available OS images - and how the system is setup. The available hardware/software is described briefly in SSC - Systems overview
5. Assign the timeframe for exclusive system access for the different teams
6. Presentation of any sponsor providing licenses teams could use
7. Q&A

After the kick-off meeting the teams will be granted exclusive access to 2 nodes and the storage server of the system equiped with standard images - based on Rocky 8 - provided by the organizer. This phase can be used to:

• gain familiarity with the systems
• understand the used structure and processes
• understand the limitations of the system
• setup compute nodes and storage server images to their liking, configure these systems run tests and also prepare the benchmarking campaign
• create recipes/installation description for their final system
• clarify open questions, be it technical or organizational, with the organizer

Utilizing the gained knowledge and setup documentation the organizer and the team will devise schedule within the given teams exclusive access timeframe to ensure that the teams can work frictionless within the given timeframe.

S^3 - Storage Summer School

This storage summer school will take place during the onboarding phase. Sponsors, vendors and GWDG staff will present:

• general information about storage system
• specific solutions and approaches
• optional hands-on or exercises This subevent can be used by the participants, to start networking with sponsors and vendors and is an opportunity for teams to get it contact with possible sponsors for the event.

Exclusive access and benchmarking

The teams will setup their solution for the competition on the full system. GWDG staff may support here to get the systems started but no configuration/optimization to setup the system for the benchmarking campaign of the team will be done by technical staff.

After it is ensured that the systems are booted as expected the teams will have 2 weeks to perform their test and execute the given tasks.

While the timeframe covers 4 weeks the last week will be used as buffer by the technical staff to ensure the system state, including OS images, is back to the standard config provided by GWDG in the beginning to ensure the same starting conditions for all teams.

Results presentation

At ISC25, we will host a BoF session and will reveal the results and honor the successful teams. Selected teams will have the opportunity to present their approach and results in detail.

In case the BoF is not accepted, we will organize a parallel (online) event but still hand out the trophies during ISC.