The following summarizes the most significant changes in the operations of the Sabine/Opuntia cluster:

  1. Usage of Carya, Opuntia or Sabine is free to any researcher of the University of Houston. Prospective users should submit a short proposal with a concise description of the project stating the amount of compute time and storage required. This process allows for a fair utilization of compute resources, and gives RCDC the ability to estimate compute demand for future systems more accurately. Please contact us if you need help with formulating your request.

   2.  Backup procedures on Sabine have changed. User home directories are being backed up similarly to previous RCDC clusters. However, project directories are not being backed up on this and future RCDC systems. The Sabine storage is configured such that hardware failures should not lead to data loss in the vast majority of scenarios.  Users are however required to maintain their own backup of code and data to handle rare, catastrophic failures. Furthermore, it is not possible to restore any data in these directories that has accidentally been deleted by users.

  3. RCDC provides projects a free storage quota of up to 10 TB each on Opuntia/Sabine. Those quotes are made availble upon request only. Storage requests exceeding this capacity will be handled through individual Memorandum of Understandings between users and the PIs, and may include a monthly charge (please contact us for details).

The Carya cluster is the latest addition to the RCDC resources. A detailed description of the Carya hardware can be found at the Carya resource page. Information about the Sabine cluster can be found Sabine Resource description page.