We’re here again – UCloud hits another milestone: There are now more than 8000 users! This is an increase of 1000 users during less than 3 months!
The activity on the platform has been sky-high during the past few weeks – possibly amplified by the many researchers who praised the platform and inspired others at the DeiC conference on the 7-8th of November.
The graph above shows the overall utilization of UCloud from the 23rd of November to the 29th of November 2023. Average utilization in this period was almost 160 % of the total national capacity. The graph also demonstrates that the system is used at maximum capacity (173,9 %) for several hours during workdays. For the users, this means that their submitted jobs are placed in a queue where they wait for the machines to become available, instead of running immediately.
Another example of the system reaching maximum capacity: On the 22nd of November 2023, every single u1-standard core on UCloud was unavailable. Everything had been allocated. Since late November, this has been the general picture for u1-standard cores on UCloud during working hours.
UCloud passed 8000 users on the 21st of November 2023. The platform has thousands of active users every week, >800 active projects and a retention rate of 60-80 %. This is excellent news, but also causes quite a bit of stress on the system, which is reaching its maximum capacity.
Part of UCloud’s success can be attributed to the platform’s ability to attract and retain new types of users. The distribution of users amongst research areas clearly demonstrates this: there is a very large portion of users – 25 % – from the SSH (Social Sciences and Humanities) area, which is not something you typically see on an HPC system.
