General comments:

  • Instruction is the priority. The facilities and resources are available for research as well, but research should not impede instruction.
  • Use should be courteous of the needs of others. This includes not running multiple computationally intensive jobs in parallel on a single CPU machine, but rather running them one at a time.
  • Data intensive simulations should make use of local disk space such as /scratch where available. (All of the CPU servers have a /scratch directory.) This alleviates network congestion and load on the computer. The result is better performance.
  • If research needs cannot be met with existing equipment, then the College computing support can recommend appropriate equipment to purchase.

Remote use:

  • Remote and unattended CPU intensive work should be performed on the compute servers. No one person or group should consume all resources on one or all of these servers; leave capacity for others.
  • Unattended simulations should be displayed on and controlled from computers in department offices or facilities, but may make use of the COE compute servers.

Remote simulations are not allowed on lab machines at this time for several reasons:

  1. Other, more appropriate resources are available (the CPU servers).
  2. The labs are often used for instruction; we need to maximize student access to these resources.

These policies may be altered and/or updated as available resources and usage patterns change.

Questions about the use of the facilities should be addressed to the College of Engineering Support at support.