The Tufts High Performance Compute (HPC) cluster delivers 35,845,920 cpu hours and 59,427,840 gpu hours of free compute time per year to the user community.
Teraflops: 60+ (60+ trillion floating point operations per second) cpu: 4000 cores gpu: 6784 cores Interconnect: 40GB low latency ethernet
For additional information, please contact Research Technology Services at tts-research@tufts.edu
User Account Info
What is the hostname of the cluster?
What is the hostname of the file transfer node of the cluster?
Important Quality of Service(QoS) Notice
Headnode QoS
We have seen from time to time loads of the headnode resulting from jobs that should be directed to the compute nodes. Often this is just a user mistake, but results in lower quality of service to others trying to prepare work for the compute nodes. It is policy that all significant research codes and related work be submitted to run on the compute nodes. In order to help promote the best possible quality of service, effective 6-24-2013, any running jobs on the head node deemed load producing and excessive will be terminated without notice. This will help insure the best possible responsiveness of headnode resources for everyone. Offending users will be further notified and reminded to submit jobs to the compute nodes. Jobs are submitted with slurm commands to the appropriate slurm partition meeting your needs. If you any questions about this change, please send your comments via email to: tts-research@tufts.edu
Application Xwindow QoS
Any application, such as Matlab, that creates interactive Xwindows gui presentations will often not display on your local xserver(cygwin, exceed, xwin32,etc...) with the same low latency associated with the application(Matlab) locally installed. This is partly a function of load on the compute node the application is running on, the denseness of the graphics you are creating, the load on the network that connects you remotely and the quality of your video card. It this presents an issue for development tasks, then a locally installed version of the application is suggested. The use of the cluster thereafter could be in support of batch processing to achieve some desired level of scaling. If you any questions, please send your comments to: tts-research@tufts.edu
Account Information
Access to the Cluster or Bioinformatic server requires a Research Cluster account. Faculty, other staff, and students are required to fill out the TTS Research Computer Account Application form.
Please contact the TTS Support Center at x7-3376 or by email at it@tufts.edu if further assistance is needed.
I am a Tufts faculty member and would like to provide cluster access to a non Tufts collaborator. What is required?
Non Tufts collaborators may obtain a cluster account with your approval and sponsorship. Accounts are created against a Tufts authorized database of eligible faculty, staff and students. To extend this access a form is required to be filled out by both the sponsor and non Tufts person. Please download and see the attached form for instructions.
For Medical School situations, the following form is appropriate.
I have an account for some time obtained as a non Tufts collaborator and I can't login. What might be wrong?
The research cluster relies on the Tufts Directory for authentication. It is possible that your account has expired. If so you won't be able to log in until that is resolved. You should contact the Faculty owner/manager of the project you're involved in and ask to have your Tufts Username made eligible again. Once your account is made eligible again then your account on the cluster should be automatically activated again within 24 hours.
How do I login to the cluster?
There is no web based interface for this purposed. Use your Tufts Username and Tufts password with ssh or Cygwin for Windows.
Note, usernames are all lower case, but passwords can be any mix of upper and lower and special characters and numbers. Most failed attempts at connecting to the cluster are typo failures. Please pay attention to what you type. Linux is case sensitive!
What is a Tufts Username?
This is your Tufts Login Name, associated with most of the systems that require authentication, including email, LAN access, HR systems, SIS, DARS, TUSK, and the Tufts White Pages directory.
I've forgotten my account password. How can I get it reset?
If you have forgotten your Tufts password and need assistance
resetting it, please contact one of the following:
Alternatively, visit the central website IT at Tufts for additional assistance.
NOTE: Generally speaking, the cluster uses your Tufts Username and password pair. The cluster doesn't expire passwords. When that happens it is due to the Tufts system that supports usernames and passwords. If you use a non Tufts email system or you don't login to the Tufts Windows Domain, it is likely that when your Tufts password expires, you will not know because you were not notified. Consider setting a Tufts forwarding email address. This will allow you to receive notification so that you may reset your password.
When I request an account what happens?
You will be contacted by email with cluster related information. Here is the standard email that is sent to you.
When I login I see the following -bash-3.2$ , what is it?
This is the default prompt for your bash shell. This is where you issue linux commands.
Additional information about connecting to the cluster can be found on the previous pages.
Additional cluster HPC resources
If the resources of the Tufts cluster do not meet your scaling needs, consider the various supercomputing sites such as Xsede.
To discuss this further please contact tts-research@tufts.edu.
For additional information, please contact Research Technology Services at tts-research@tufts.edu