Documentation Overview
If you are ready to get started with various programs or resources in RCD, this page is for you. Our Documentation page outlines the steps and processes of using systems like Palmetto 2 or our Indigo Storage Lake, and even helpful information for support if you need it.
Sections
The drop-downs listed for each resource contain links to our Documentation subpages that are directly related to each specific item. Find the answers you need or reach out if you need more help via the information below. RCD is happy to support you.
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Palmetto 2
Palmetto supports the research mission of Clemson University through innovative High Performance Computing (HPC) and Storage solutions. Our Research Computing & Data team helps students and faculty by providing user support, training, and hardware maintenance.
Recommended Pages
Here are a few pages we recommend taking a look at:
Getting Started About The Cluster Logging In Office Hours
Statistics
Currently Palmetto is comprised of 1138 nodes (totaling 46736 CPU cores), and features:
- 1138 compute nodes, totaling 46736 cores
- over 700 nodes are equipped with 2 or more GPUs
- 12 large-memory nodes with over 1TB of RAM
- 250 GB home directory space for each user
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Indigo Data Lake
The Indigo Data Lake supports the research mission of Clemson University by providing high-performance storage services to researchers.
Recommended Pages
Here are a few pages we recommend taking a look at:
About Indigo Quota Management Desktop Access HPC Access
About Indigo
The Indigo Data Lake is the new research data storage solution provided by the Research Computing and Data (RCD) group.
Indigo is designed to provide high-performance and high-capacity data storage solutions for a wide variety of applications. Multiple access methods make connecting, storing, and retrieving your research data easier than ever. These benefits can be shared with other users by adding collaborators to your space.
The hardware behind Indigo is powered by VAST Data.
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ColdFront
ColdFront is our new resource and allocation management tool. It will streamline requests for RCD resources. With ColdFront, faculty (PIs) are able to:
- Request allocation on Palmetto 2 and other RCD resources.
- Add/Remove user access to their requested allocations.
- Elevate selected users to be Managers, allowing the, to handle many of the project owner's tasks (adding/removing users, renewing allocations, updating project information).
- Provide information such as grants, publications and other reportable data for periodic review by center director to demonstrate the need for the resources.
With ColdFront, students cannot become Principle Investigators (PIs) and are not authorized to create projects in ColdFront. However, they can be promoted to Manager status within a project, allowing them to act on behalf of the project owner by managing users access and allocations.
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Open OnDemand
Open OnDemand (OOD or OpenOD) is a browser-based GUI for interacting with high-performance computing environments. Developed and maintained by the Ohio Supercomputing Center, OOD provides users with a unified and easy-to-use interface to help streamline most frequent interactions with the backend large-scale computing resources.
Note
While OpenOD has been available at Clemson University since June 2021, it is still under active development. We may make changes to the interface and look forward to adding more tools and capabilities over time.
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Resource Owner
Resource owner documentation can be found on the RCD Documentation website. Please note that this information is limited to Internal Use Only and should only be shared within Clemson University.
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Mattermost
Mattermost is a collaborative chat platform similar to Slack. Collaborate with other researchers and share ideas and best practices. There are channels for disciplines, software, and programming languages.
RCD Mattermost will also be used by the administrators of Palmetto to communicate with users.
Tip
While convenient, RCD Mattermost is not an official way to request support. Users should continue to use our official channels for support.
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GitLab
Clemson Research Computing and Data maintains a GitLab instance at git.rcd.clemson.edu. Users with an approved GitLab Group allocation on ColdFront and those with Palmetto access are authorized to use GitLab.
Need Additional Support?
Weekly Office Hours
We invite users to request an appointment and speak with the RCD team directly.
This is a great time to:
- ask questions about Palmetto;
- follow up on a previous support request;
- get feedback on your ideas;
- solve a small problem quickly;
- and more!
Office hours are now held by appointments booked through a self-service interface, allowing much more flexibility in requesting help.
Submit A Ticket
You can request support from the RCDE team by opening a case with us through the ITHELP support ticket system. To get started, select a topic from the list below.
Email Support
Email is the best way to get in contact with the RCD team. To submit a ticket, send an email to ITHELP@clemson.edu describing your issue.
What To Include
Please include as much information as possible when composing your ticket so we can solve your problem faster. The more information we have, the fewer follow-up emails we will need to send.
- A set of reproduction steps - the exact commands that you run immediately after logging in, which will produce the problem.
- Output you received - the exact output from each command, especially any error messages.
- File locations - the locations of the files/folders involved, especially your Slurm batch script.
- Expected results - what you expected to happen, and why.
- Other details - as relevant to your problem (OS, SSH client, etc.).
