The Users Bulletin provides a summary of new policies, procedures, and events of interest to MSI users. It is published quarterly.
To request technical assistance with your MSI account, please contact help@msi.umn.edu.
1. Annual Account Renewal Deadline, Dec 1: The deadline for annual MSI account renewals is December 1. PIs and Group Administrators will receive email notification with instructions when the renewal period is open, on or about November 1. Renewals are submitted using your myMSI portal. Renewal by December 1 ensures continued MSI access through the following calendar year.
2. LCSE-MSI Visualization Laboratory (LMVL) Upgrade: MSI has upgraded its high-end visualization lab (LMVL) with a focus on analyzing complex and huge volumes of data (multiple Terabytes and up). With one 4K resolution projector behind each of three large panels that span 27+ feet, the venue is ideal for displaying ultra-complex data to groups of up to 40 people. Dedicated high-end PCs, with GPUs and a 40 GigE connection to MSI and campus networks, enable compute-, graphics-, and data-intensive applications in an interactive environment. Check the LMVL webpage for more details.
To introduce the campus community to this new resource, MSI will host three Open Houses. The dates are as follows:
- Friday, September 22, 1-3pm
- Monday, September 25, 9-11am
- Thursday, September 28, 2-4pm
All are welcome to attend and no reservations are necessary. The LMVL is located at 125 Walter Library.
To further explore possibilities, MSI is also planning to hold a competition for innovative ways for how the new LMVL can be used. This will be part of the annual MSI Research Exhibition in Spring 2018. Details will be sent to users and posted on the MSI website as they become available.
3. Scratch Storage: MSI’s shared scratch storage volume was heavily utilized during the months of June and July, so much so that on one occasion all jobs writing to scratch failed because scratch reached its capacity. We worked one-on-one with users to prevent future failures by moving some data off of scratch to other MSI storage resources better suited for longer-term data storage. We have now implemented measures to safeguard against scratch filling and causing jobs writing to scratch to crash. An email concerning these measures was sent out on July 31; the text of the email was also posted to the website: Protection of Data in Scratch Storage.
4. DMD Conference: The Design of Medical Devices Conference, presented by the Earl E. Bakken Medical Devices Center, will be held April 9-12, 2017, on the East Bank Campus. The Call for Papers is open to faculty, staff, and students; papers can be submitted through November 1. Complete information can be found on the conference website.
5. Fall Tutorials: The list of upcoming tutorials for the fall has been posted on the MSI website. See the list on the MSI website.
Tutorials are now being live-streamed on the MSI YouTube channel. Tutorials can also be viewed on the channel afterwards.
6. Jobs at MSI:
See the Employment page on the MSI website for available jobs at MSI.
7. Useful Webpages: Looking for help with using MSI? One of these pages may have the information you need:
b. Getting Started (includes Quickstart Guides)
c. MSI Systems
e. Staff Listing and Areas of Expertise
f. Upcoming Events and Tutorials