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.
![](http://escience.sdu.dk/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/usage.png)
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.
![](http://escience.sdu.dk/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/image.png)
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.
![](http://escience.sdu.dk/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/users-1.png)
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.
![](http://escience.sdu.dk/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/slide.png)
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.