Introduction to HPC Workshop: 22/29 April 2024

The Division of Information Technology (DIT) at the University of Maryland is pleased to announce the following workshop for users of our High Performance Computing (HPC) resources.

There are only a limited number of seats available. Registration will remain open until 21 April 2024 or until all seats are filled. We expect the workshop to fill up before the registration deadline.

Introduction to HPC Workshop
Dates	22 April 2024 (Part 1) 29 April 2024 (Part 2)
Times	12:00 - 2:00 PM
Location	Brendan Iribe Center, Room 2207
Instructor	Dr. Franz Klein Division of Information Technology, UMD
Cost	free
Registration Form	link to registration form
Registration Deadline	21 April 2024 or when registration is full

Overview

This workshop is targeted at new users of the University's "Zaratan" cluster and at those users who want to refresh/improve parameter settings in their job scripts.
This "lunch-time" workshop is divided into 2 parts.

Part 1 (on 4/22/24) will address the following tasks using the Open-OnDemand web portal after a short intro to general HPC concepts and terminology:

accessing the cluster
transferring files
accessing software installed on the cluster
submitting jobs on the cluster

The web portal offers unexperienced users an efficient way to accomplish most practical tasks.
Note that you have to be connected to UMD's GlobalProtect VPN in order to access the OnDemand web portal at https://portal.zaratan.umd.edu.

Part 2 (on 4/29/24) we will cover operations using the command-line based Unix shell on the HPC cluster:

accessing the HPC cluster using ssh or PuTTY
transferring data from/to the HPC cluster
accessing software installed on the HPC cluster
setting up job submission scripts (with focus on SBATCH directives for various configurations)

Prerequisites

None. This is an introductory workshop, so no previous knowledge of high performance computing nor Linux/Unix is assumed.

System Requirements

This is a bring-your-own-laptop event. For Part 2, make sure that a terminal application (e.g. ssh or PuTTY) is installed. A modern web browser (on Windows preferably Firefox) is required for use of the Open-OnDemand web portal in Part 1.

Miscellaneous Details

While the official registration deadline is 21 April 2024, we are limiting this workshop to 54 participants (number of classroom seats) on a first-come, first-served basis, and registration will close once the workshop is full.
Participants who register by the deadline (21 April 2024) will get an HPC account on Zaratan and access to examples in "$HOME/scratch.hpcintro-shared".

NOTE: DIT reserves the right to cancel the workshop for any reason with little notice.

If you have questions or need more information about the workshop, please feel free to contact us.