Later this spring, a new supercomputer, Béluga, will join Compute Canada's national platform, further enhancing the computing and stoarge capabilities available for researchers across Canada. On April 4, the support team at Calcul Québec will host an information webinar to share an overview of the system's features, and answer questions about its capabilities.
Anyone interested in learning more about the new Béluga system is invited to tune into the webcast:
Thursday, April 4
9:00 - 10:00 am...
On March 31, 2019, WestGrid’s remaining legacy system -- Orcinus -- will be defunded and no longer available as part of the Compute Canada national platform. The University of British Columbia has offered to continue operating this system for opportunistic use by existing users only, with priority access given to researchers located at or collaborating with UBC.
Please remember that support and maintenance of this system is provided on a best efforts basis...
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Gemma Hoad joined WestGrid and the Research Computing Team at Simon Fraser University in 2018. Gemma has 20 years experience working in the bioinformatics sector of the biotechnology industry.
Her extensive experience covers data management of large medical and biological data sets, designing and writing reusable code, teaching coding techniques to manage shared data, managing web applications and identifying tasks which can be carried out by...
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Compute Canada provides a range of storage options, from high-speed temporary local storage to different kinds of long-term storage, so that users can choose what best corresponds to their needs and usage patterns. The main Compute Canada documentation for managing your file storage and data backup needs can be found at:
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UBC Advanced Research Computing (ARC) is looking for four individuals who are adaptable and passionate about research and innovation to join its team in Vancouver. UBC ARC is offering four positions that engage with some of the best investigators in the world and collaborate with experts across the country and beyond. To view the posting details, click the job titles in the list below:
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A free workshop series is coming to Simon Fraser University (SFU) in March, co-hosted by SFU WestGrid. The sessions will provide hands-on introductions to essential tools and skills used in computational research. Researchers in all disciplines are invited to participate. No prior experience is required for any of the topics being covered. You can attend single sessions or the entire series, and these workshops are open to anyone -- researchers from other institutions and organizations outside of SFU are welcome to register.
There is...
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Join us Friday, March 1, for our first Community Town Hall of 2019.
This session will feature a special presentation on using large scale systems such as Cedar and will share some best practices to help users mitagate the risks of system instability.
Patrick Mann, WestGrid's Director of Operations, will also share the latest updates affecting advanced research computing users in Western Canada. Attendees are welcome to ask questions on these and any other topics and may join the session at any time.
Our...
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WestGrid's quarterly newsletter is now available to read online. If you would like to be added to the mailing list to receive WestGrid newsletters, sign up here.
Stories this month include:
Thank you to the more than 260 respondents who took the time to complete our third annual WestGrid User Survey last November. The purpose was to gather feedback on user and stakeholder satisfaction and to get a better understanding of your current and future research computing needs.
We’re happy to share a snapshot of this years results in our 2018 User Survey Infographic.
...
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Cedar will be unavailable March 1 for required system software updates. Jobs with run times that would extend into March 1 will not be started prior to the outage, and any jobs still running by March 1 will be terminated.
The system is planned to be back online by the end of the day, March 1, however, data on the /project filesystem will not be available until after March 4 in order to expand the /project filesystem. Therefore, researchers who want to run jobs on Cedar between March 2-4 must copy...
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