GLiCID is the HPC center for research in the French region of Pays de la Loire, merging the various pre-existing HPC centers in the region.

The installation of new machines in June 2023 has led to the launch of a brand new common system infrastructure (identity management, slurm services, databases, etc.), independent (as far as possible) of the solutions provided by the manufacturers.

Installed on 2 remotes machine rooms, the infrastructure has to be highly available, implying complex deployment. However, the team wanted to guarantee simple, predictable redeployment of the infrastructure in the event of problems.

Guix, offered as standard on all our clusters, has a proven track record of reproducibility, which is also a desirable feature for our infrastructure. We have therefore tried to build it with Guix. We'll be reporting on the impact of these choices (both positive and negative), and why a 100% rate has not yet been achieved.