ARCSIM welcomes new members after ACG merger

The University of Maine’s Advanced Research Computing Security and Information Management unit (ARCSIM) merged with the Advanced Computing Group (ACG) in October 2024. This merger is focused towards creating more efficient and effective services for the entire University of Maine System. With that comes the addition of Forrest Flagg and Chris Dalton to the ARCSIM team. Their engagement ensures the continuation of service for hardware and other systems. 

Flagg, a cloud system administrator, completed his undergraduate and graduate degrees in computer engineering at UMaine and is responsible for building, running and maintaining ARCSIM’s virtual machine and data storage infrastructure. ARCSIM has two virtual machine offerings, one geared towards research and education and another allowing researchers to work with compliant HIPAA data. The CEPH storage cluster is foundational to many of ARCSIM’s services, and the unit is continuing to expand and upgrade the cluster. Currently, Flagg is overseeing an upgrade that expands the storage cluster from nearly three petabytes of raw storage to more than seven petabytes.

Dalton serves as ARCSIM’s cyberinfrastructure engineer maintaining and administering ARCSIM’s on-premise high-performance computing (HPC) compute clusters. ARCSIM operates two HPC clusters currently, Katahdin and Penobscot. The Penobscot cluster, which Dalton implemented in 2024, will eventually replace the Katahdin cluster. In addition to these responsibilities, Dalton serves as a liaison between ARCSIM and peer organizations like the Open Science Grid (OSG). 

Their collective expertise will help extend and expand ARCSIM’s services throughout the University of Maine System. With them comes an immense amount of institutional knowledge and strong relationships across the system and broader research community. Flagg and Dalton will help shape the future of  ARCSIM as the unit works to further streamline processes, improve offerings and services. Collectively, the unit aims to enable the University of Maine System and its research and education mission by offering capable, competitive, and accessible research computing services. 

To learn more about the ARCSIM-ACG merger please visit the ARCSIM website.