News

Official starting shot for BigBlueButton at the JGU

Mainz, 28. May 2020

Today the JGU Data Center (ZDV) officially releases the software BigBlueButton (BBB) with long-term support at the Johannes Gutenberg-University. The open source software for web-conferences will run on the university's own servers ensuring a high level of data security. During the ongoing summer semester and for the semesters to come it will be an important pillar of digital teaching and lerning at the JGU.

Important for using BBB at the JGU was on the one hand the integration with the digital teaching platform Moodle, on the other hand the possibility to record sessions. Other advantages compared to other conference tools are:

  • breakout-rooms for working in small groups
  • working cooperatively via whiteboard
  • creating surveys and webinars
  • integration with the communication software Mattermost

This way BBB increases the flexibility for our teachers regarding planning and conducting classes.

Head of the Data Center Prof. Dr.-Ing. André Brinkmann feels confindent about BigBlueButton becoming another key component in digital teaching and lerning at the JGU: "We have made very good experiences with this software so far and with it we can close the gap in the range of videoconference systems, that existed between Skype for Business and Teams."

Backstage, new options are already in progress, such as a download function of recordings.
As usual the Data Center and the task force Digital Teaching and Learning offer on their web pages helpful instructions and tutorials on login and using the software.

An overall the federal state project

In cooperation with the ministry of science, development and culture (MWWK) and the ministry of education of the federal state Rhineland-Palatinate the Data Center makes BigBlueButton available to other colleges, universities and schools in Rhineland-Palatinate as well.


More news from the Data Center → may be found here.

Scan to Seafile: since March 16th Available for All Users

Since March 16th, 2020 direct saving of scans to Seafile from the multifunction devices provided by the Data Center has been made available for all users. The advantage is: if you save scans to Seafile, there is no size limit for the scanned documents. Direct sending of scans via mail have been deactivated from March 16th, since a size limit would apply to that.

More information about scanning to Seafile is available in this documentation:

→ https://www.zdv.uni-mainz.de/scan2seafile/ (in German)


More news from the Data Center → may be found here.

GekkoFS ranked #4 in the IO500’s “10-Node Challenge” at SC19

The GekkoFS file system jointly developed by the ZDV and the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC) has been ranked No. 4 in the IO500’s “10-Node Challenge”. GekkoFS is a file system capable of aggregating the local I/O capacity and performance of each compute node in a HPC cluster to produce a high-performance storage space that can be accessed in a distributed manner. This storage space allows HPC applications and simulations to run in isolation from each other with regards to I/O, which reduces interferences and improves performance.

The development has been funded in the context of the SPPEXA programme and the Europeans Horizon 2020’s NEXTGenIO project. The IO500’s “10-Node Challenge” list is a global ranking that uses multiple concurrent processes running in 10 compute nodes to benchmark the I/O performance of a HPC storage system in terms or bandwidth and throughput. GekkoFS’ score of 125 ranks it 4th in IO500’s 10-Node Challenge List and 9th in IO500’s full list .

The IO500 benchmark was run on the 34 compute nodes of the NEXTGenIO prototype cluster. Each of the prototype’s 34 nodes is equipped with two 2nd generation Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors and 3 TBytes of Intel® Optane™ DC persistent memory, thus providing approximately 102 TBytes of persistent I/O capacity to HPC applications.


More news from the Data Center → may be found here.

latex.zdv.uni-mainz.de – collaborative use of ShareLaTeX/Overleaf

Since the beginning of September 2019 an installation of ShareLaTeX/Overleaf is available at → https://latex.zdv.uni-mainz.de/ where you may login with your JGU account.

In ShareLaTeX/Overleaf LaTeX source code may be edited online by several users at the same time. The system supports almost all functions of LaTeX, for example inserting pictures, bibliographies and equations.

More information about the system is available here:

→ https://www.zdv.uni-mainz.de/sharelatex-overleaf-latex-zdv-uni-mainz-de/ (in German), and here:

→ https://de.overleaf.com/learn (documentation in English).


More news from the Data Center → may be found here.

Linux available in course rooms 3 and 4

Due to an increased demand regarding the availability of Linux computers usable for courses, a Linux operating system (ZDV Linux Desktop), which may be started as an alternative operating system on our course room computers, has now been made available in course rooms 3 and 4.

This has been signposted on the doors of course rooms 3 and 4. Documentations about starting the course room computers using Linux, as well as about shutting down Linux and restarting the computers using Windows, are to be found on the walls of these rooms (in German and English), as well as on the following web site:

→ https://www.en-zdv.uni-mainz.de/linux-within-the-course-rooms/

In case you are interested in using Linux as an alternative operating system in other course or pool rooms,  please, contact our helpdesk:

Contact

Hotline/Helpdesk of the Data Center
Johann-Joachim-Becher-Weg 21
Tel.: 06131 39-2 63 16
Email | Homepage
Monday until Friday from 9.00 until 18.00
→ Floor plan


More news from the Data Center → may be found here.