We encourage faculty, Lectures, and TAs etc to utilize the hummingbird cluster for instructional use in their course curriculum.

If you are planning to use hummingbird for your course please let us know what quarter, what software and approximately how many students will be using it.  We require at least six weeks lead time to configure HB for a course.

Please send course information, enrollment and other details to: hummingbird@ucsc.edu

Course Site Creation:  This allows all of your students and yourself to access the same directory where you place course materials such as example software and documentation.  Course sites are located in the /hb/groups directory on Hummingbird.   The retention policy for the courses sites is 30 days after the end of the course.  You must contact us in order to maintain the site (indefinitely) or to arrange to retrieve files and data from the site before it is removed.

Courses in general use the partition called Instruction unless your course is using the GPUs.

We have a number of tutorials and information about the cluster in our documentation.

This site also has a very good introduction to cluster computing: HPC Carpentry

The following outlines basic policy and best practice for instructional use:

The Hummingbird Team will provide the following:

Provides as best effort:

• Cluster is online and functioning
• Maintain the operation of the SLURM batch queue
• Maintain the various job execution partitions
• Maintain a secure and redundant environment
• Software and compilers are up to date as needed
• Will train/assist faculty general cluster usage. (request a visit to your class for example)

Faculty/Lecturer/Instructor  Responsibilities:

• Plan curriculum according to the parameters of the existing cluster capacity.
• Avoid time constrained assignments especially at end of quarter.
• Students given basic training in Linux usage, SLURM batch queue system and module environment usage
• Student support with software usage for course

Nota bene: If there are too many instructors wanting to use the cluster for a given quarter we may not be to accommodate everyone.

Again please contact us with questions and request via hummingbird@ucsc.edu