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Research Computing at Sydney
Welcome to the Research Computing wiki! This space is home to technical documentation for research computing infrastructure at the University of Sydney.
How to use this guide
Please see the following sections of our documentation for details on how to access and use services available to USyd researchers:
Category | What does it include? |
|---|---|
Different research computing infrastructures available to USyd researchers. Includes: high performance computing (HPC), cloud computing, virtual machines, and virtual research desktops. | |
Working, immediate, and long-term storage options. | |
Transferring data across different platforms and storage locations. | |
Version control and collaborative code management with the git version control system. |
List of platforms available to USyd researchers
Research Data Platforms
The University provides and supports a suite of different tools to aid with storing and managing your research data.
Please refer to the following pages for information on University-supported research data platforms:
Research Compute Platforms
Researchers from Sydney use many different computational platforms and services to undertake their research. The platforms listed below may help cover the various computing needs you face from day-to-day administrative tasks, running complex analyses, using specialised software, collaborating or presenting results, and more.
National Infrastructure
NCI - Based in Canberra. HPC and Cloud services. Merit-based access and free tier via the University of Sydney scheme allocation.
Pawsey - Based in Perth. HPC services. Merit-based access and free tier via the University of Sydney HPC scheme allocation.
Nectar - Australia Research Data Commons supported cloud. Merit-based access.
Galaxy Australia - free web-based platform for accessible, reproducible and transparent computational workflows with a focus on Bioinformatics.
Taingiwilta - Defense Science and Technology Group HPC.
Sydney Managed
SIH GPU Cluster - High-performance NVIDIA GPU cluster for AI, modelling and simulation.
Personal Computer - For all-round compute needs, be sure to follow usual backup, encryption, and cyber security practices.
Argus Virtual Research Desktops - Dedicated cloud machine with specialty software with direct links to other Sydney platforms.
ICT Virtual Machines - Useful for hosting of web pages/services, can integrate with RDS.
Citrix Uniconnect - Various Apps available with dedicated compute, can link to RDS.
Australian Imaging Service - All interactive and batch imaging related workflows in a highly protected environments.
Sydney Supported (Paid by researcher)
Ronin Cloud (formerly Research Cloud) - This is a front-end to AWS EC2 compute instances, making provision to on-demand computing resources simple.
Microsoft Azure - offers various cloud compute options, contact your Faculty Technology Partner for more information.
Amazon Web Services - offers various cloud compute options, contact your Faculty Technology Partner for more information.
Other Compute Options
These are not supported or endorsed by Sydney University, nevertheless they are used by researchers.
DUG - Commercial HPC provider.
Google Colab (See NCI’s ARE and Nirin, or Nectar for alternative).
NVIDIA GPU Cloud (NGC)
Google Cloud Platform
Other commercial cloud offerings
Personally hosted servers
Glossary of research computing terms
Allocation: cluster usage granted per project. Allocations define the number of service units you can consume
Compute cluster: a set of networked, often identical computers (nodes) that work together to act as a single, powerful computer system
Containerisation: packaging applications and their dependencies into isolated environments
High-performance computing (HPC): use of supercomputers or clusters to solve complex, large-scale computational problems
Job submission: a user-defined task (often in the form of a script or program) that is submitted to the cluster scheduler to run on specific nodes. Often includes resource requests like CPUs, GPUs, memory, walltime
Node: an individual server within a cluster, equiped with CPUs, memory, network interfaces, sometimes GPUs
Login node: the gateway system where users log in, compile code, or launch jobs. It is not for heavy computation
Compute node: nodes performing actual computation, they are scheduled to run jobs
Research data store: USyd’s secure storage platform for research datasets
Scheduler: software that queues job submissions, allocates resources, and schedules jobs
Supercomputer: an extremely powerful computer system, often a massively parallel cluster
Virtual machine: lightweight dedicated environments ideal for persistent services, small-scale analyses, hosting web apps and databases
Virtual research desktop: on-demand GPU-enabled environments designed for interactive computation and visualisation
Virtual private network (VPN): mechanism of secure access to the University’s network from off-campus