Welcome to SWITCHengines!
SWITCHengines provides compute and storage services in the form of virtual machines to researchers, lecturers and IT-services of Swiss universities and related institutions.
Custom-tailored for academic use cases
SWITCHengines was created to expand the boundaries of local infrastructures for research, education and IT-services under maximal considerations of your needs. Check out the following three flavors.
Great flexibility and advanced scalability
SWITCHengines allows you to use the computing and storage infrastructure
- according to your needs
- when you need them and
- as long as you need them.
SWITCH provides both pay-as-you go for dynamic workload as well as longer-term usage models – with varying levels of discounts according to the volume and duration. For an overview of the available storage and compute resources click here.
Simple application and full integration
SWITCHengines are built in a way that fully integrates into the local infrastructures of your institution. Institutions can choose various levels of integration – according to their current and future needs. This includes:
- direct integration into the SWITCHlan network
- console for the integrated management of projects and users
- transparent resource usage and cost monitoring
SWITCHengines is created together with Swiss universities and related institutions (such as spin-offs, research institutions or hospitals) to create the best “integrated solution” for your needs.
Since 2018 SWITCHengines also runs Microsoft Windows. Download Factsheet.
We welcome you on SWITCHengines.
Efficient Learning and Teaching
Big Datasets
Machine Learning
Agile Performance
Flexible Teaching and Learning
National Science
Highend Teaching
Virtual Classroom
Backup Copy to Cloud
Storage Solution
Virtual Private Cloud
Next Event
IT for Research Day September 2019, Fribourg
Please find the details on the details page.
Past Events
IT for Research Day September 2018, Berne
Please find the details on the details page.
Research IT day June 2017, Lausanne
Please find the details on the details page.
Event for Big Data & Faster Research April 2017
Please find the details on the details page.
Event for IT services and Researchers October 2016
Please find the details on the details page.
Events for IT services in May 2015
For more information see this page.
Events for Researchers and Lecturers in June 2015
For more information see this page.
Basic infrastructure for funded projects
Projects funded by swissuniversities' program "P-5 Scientific information" can use the compute and storage services created by this project free of charge. Projects can be accommodated within the limits of available capacity until August 2018 (subject to agreement with SWITCH).
Data lifecycle management (DLCM)
Currently the University of Geneva, which is responsible for the national long-term preservation infrastructure, is working on the architecture and its proof of concept (POC) of an Open Archival Information System (OAIS) compliant system. For that, there is a need to benefit from cloud services such as proposed by SWITCHengines. The POC of that system is realized on SWITCHengines.
For more information about the DLCM project, see: http://www.dlcm.ch
e-Science Coordination Team Project, University of Zurich (formerly eSCT, now EnhanceR)
University of Zurich, a partner in the e-Science Coordination Team (formerly eSCT, now EnhanceR) project has been using SWITCHengines for several data analysis tasks in a Cloud bursting setup:
- Biochemistry: Docking Ligands to Proteins with rDock
- Business: Process social network data through Natural Language Processing tools
- Geography: Process GPS data in an RData file
The SWITCHengines service helped the Science IT team of the University of Zurich to satisfy peak requests for computing resources.
For more information about the EnhanceR project, see https://www.enhancer.ch/
National e-Infrastructure link for Switzerland (NeI-CH)
The NeI-CH project has started to run physics related computations on the cloud infrastructure. The simulations are tested for their fitness to the cloud infrastructure also with regard to particularities and new possibilities compared to the traditional HPC environments.
For more information about the DLCM project, see: http://lhep.unibe.ch/neich/
-> Subproject TmLQCD (Twisted Mass Lattice QCD)
TmLQCD is a Hybrid Monte Carlo implementation for Wilson and Wilson twisted mass fermions and inverter for different versions of the Dirac operators, is fully parallelised and tested successfully on various modern architectures.The goal of this exercise is to make some exploratory studies on the features of particles on low-energy regions.
-> Subproject GEANT
Geant4 (Geometry and Tracking) is a platform for simulation of passage of particles through matter. It is a standard tool for design and simulation of particle physics detectors, also used in medical and space physics applications. The outcome of this exercise will be a master thesis on muon background simulation for a neutrino experiment. The general Geant4 image created, can in the future be used in other applications.
-> Subproject ATLAS Simulation
The ATLAS Simulation is also based on Geant4. The detector geometry is described and the interactions of the particles with the different layers of the detector is simulated. This is included in the general ATLAS software framework (Athena). The outcome of the exercise is to produce real simulated events as part of the general ATLAS Monte Carlo simulation campaign. This requires the transparent integration of the ATLAS framework with the cloud infrastructure.
SWISSUbase
SWISSUbase is a national cross-disciplinary solution for Swiss universities and other research organisations in need of local institutional data repositories for their researchers. The platform relies on international archiving standards and processes to ensure that data are preserved and accessible in the long-term. SWISSUbase is a collaboration by FORS, University of Lausanne, University of Zurich and SWITCH.
