Compute Canada

1. Arbutus - A cloud platform with compute and persistent nodes, located at the University of Victoria
2. Béluga - A general-purpose HPC cluster, located at the École de technologie supérieure in Montréal
3. Cedar - A large general-purpose HPC cluster, located at Simon Fraser University
4. Graham - A general-purpose HPC cluster, located at the University of Waterloo
5. Niagara - A tightly coupled HPC cluster, located at the University of Toronto

There are currently three principal cloud services available:

• OwnCloud. This service is run on the Cedar system at Simon Fraser University. It provides 50 GB of Dropbox-like storage to anyone with a Compute Canada account that has turned on their access to WestGrid. It can be accessed via Internet browsers, a downloadable desktop tool, or an app placed on a cell phone or tablet.
• Globus. This is a file transfer tool that offers a drag-and-drop-like interface via Internet browsers (a command line version is also available). It has powerful features like full encryption, fire and forget transfers that automatically continue when the connection is interrupted, and a very efficient/fast transfer protocol. Globus is useful for moving data to and from Compute Canada systems but also for moving data between (almost) any system that an account holder has access to.
• OpenStack Cloud. OpenStack is the tool used by most Compute Canada cloud sites to provide account holders with the ability to assemble virtual machines in the cloud that can be put to work doing pretty much anything that a powerful desktop/laptop (or set of powerful desktops/laptops) could do.

• Log in to ccdb.computecanada.ca
• Select “Apply for a consortium account” from the “My Account” menu
• Select WestGrid

A variety of training opportunities are available throughout the year on an ongoing basis.

Principally these include:

• Data and/or Software Carpentry Workshops. These are two day workshops meant to bootstrap researchers into the position where they are able to begin handling data appropriately and using programming pipelines to process them. These are typically available at the start of each Fall and Winter term.
• Webinars. These are available throughout the term with a rotating array of topics. A calendar of upcoming training is available on the Compute Canada website. A listing of archived WestGrid training events is also available on their training site.
• HPC Systems Skills Workshops. These are typically run as in-person workshops at the University of Alberta during Research Computing Bootcamps held three times each year: late April to early May, late September to early October, and late January to early February.

Compute Canada account holders have access to a variety of storage resources across the available systems ranging from 50 GB via OwnCloud (see Cloud section for details) to petabytes of storage for large research projects. The exact amount of storage available depends on the system being used and whether the account holder has been allocated storage resources beyond the basic amounts available to all users.

Use of storage systems within the Compute Canada network is free for faculty and librarians at Canadian research institutions, although use beyond basic amounts is subject to the RAC review process. Find out more about the Resource Allocation Competition (RAC).

WestGrid maintains a Visualization Expert who is shared across Compute Canada. Visualization support is available on the Compute Canada website, and some consortia within Compute Canada maintains a set of visualization resources, as follows:

• WestGrid
• Compute Ontario:
  • SHARCNET
  • SciNet

Visualization support and information is available at viz-support@computecanada.ca