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ARCC Quickstart

This quickstart guide is intended to give the details/nuances that makes ARCC's environment unique. It is useful for everyone who is interested in using ARCC resources for the first time.

Disclaimer

The video below is several years old and no longer accurate, but still has some value. Please read the step-by-step guide below for up-to-date information.

Step 1: Determine What Resources Meet Your Research Needs

ARCC offers a varety of research computing resources from High Performance Computing (HPC) and data storage to other specialized tools, which one or more to use will depend on your research needs.

Maybe you need to run complex models, simulations, artifical intelligence applications or just simply need to run many, many small calculations, HPC might be the choice for you. You can find out more about ARCC's HPC resources on the ARCC Wiki.

ARCC has data storage on the HPC systems, but also does provide data storage-only resources to meet the needs of researchers who have data, but don't necessarily need HPC.

There are different types storage resources that ARCC provides, to learn more about which one is appropriate for your needs, please see the ARCC Wiki for details.

ARCC offers other resources as well that may be more useful for researchers. These range from collaboration tools to speciatly hardware.

If neither HPC or data storage meets your research needs, please email arcc-help@uwyo.edu to request a consultation

Step 2: Determine a Project PI

ARCC operates on a research project model. This means a designated principal investigator (PI) must be selected prior to a project getting created.

Projects

This term 'project' is a very important term to remember when working on ARCC resources. It will be used in just about every document on this site relating to ARCC services.

According to ARCC policy, in order to be eligible for ARCC projects, a person affiliated with the University of Wyoming must serve as a Principal Investigator (PI). Examples of PIs are:

  • Full time UWyo Faculty
  • UWyo Research Staff/Scientists
  • UWyo Graduate Students (With capacity limitations)
  1. The PI has the duty to maintain oversight of the project. Meaning PIs are responsible for ensuring that ARCC policies, procedures, and security rules are followed by themselves and other project members.
  2. All PIs will be added to the arcc-announce listserv. This is the primary means by which ARCC communicates with researchers. Other collaborators can sign up to this listserv, but PI membership is mandatory.
  3. All changes such as granting access to other researchers, increases to storage quotas, etc. on projects have to be requested or approved by the PI.

Step 3: Determine the Project Details

All ARCC projects require some basic information:

  • This name must be all be lowercase
  • Can only contain letters, numbers, or hyphens
  • No longer than 15 characters
  • Must not contain spaces
  • This provides proof that the project is indeed a research project
  • Provides some desricption of the type of work that is being development
  • We ask for PIs to provide as many details as possible
  • For example, funding sources

Step 4: Determine Who Needs Access

Once the project PI is determined and the details are identified the PI will determine what other researchers can access their project.

  • This means that collaborators within the University (e.g. students).
  • External to UWyo users can also be granted access, but the type of account will be determined by the type of project.

Step 5: Request a Project

Once the determination is made for which resources are needed, who will serve as PI, what the details of the project are, and who else needs access, the PI can then fill out the ARCC Project Request form to get started.