DEAC Docs: The Official Docs for the DEAC cluster
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* Wake Forest University -- Distributed Environment for Academic Computing *
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* Unauthorized use is STRICTLY PROHIBITED and WFU maintains all rights to *
* University related or legal actions associated with such access. Refer *
* to https://go.wfu.edu/deac-sla for detailed documentation and policies. *
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* For questions and support, email deac-help@wfu.edu. You must acknowledge *
* the WFU HPC Facility in publications: https://go.wfu.edu/deac-doi *
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The WFU DEAC HPC Cluster is a centrally funded resource, meaning it is a free tool for all members of the WFU Undergraduate College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. The HPC Team is here to train users, troubleshoot scripts, upgrade hardware and software, and support user needs. This documentation is a starting point and reference for all DEAC Cluster users. They are intended to be a community resource for information sharing.
Note: Users must be on a WFU network or connected via VPN in order to access and login to the head nodes!
Important Links
DEAC-Help Email (deac-help@wfu.edu): Your direct line to the HPC Team.
Main website: General information about the cluster, highlighting its capabilities and publicizing some interesting results.
DEAC Cluster Documentation: Public content that provides useful information (such as this article) for cluster users new and old.
DEAC Cluster YouTube channel: Video content featuring tutorials/training and user research.
DEAC Cluster Twitter page: Public announcements and updates regarding the Cluster.
First Steps
Account Requests
If you’re reading this page, you almost certainly have it by now. So, this section will focus mainly on being a central location for existing users to reference in helping potential new users get access.
Request an Account: https://help.wfu.edu/support/catalog/items/123
Review the Cluster Use Policies.
Accessing the Cluster
There are two primary entry points in which users connect to the cluster for various resources:
Shell Access via SSH - Users connect to the interactive login nodes, aka DEAC Headnodes, using the SSH protocol, provided by any number of freely available clients (VS Code, OpenSSH, MobaXterm, putty, etc.). This is the only protocol supported for command line access (i.e. interactive logins) to the cluster and is available from the general Internet without restriction. The SSH Section is a good place to start.
File Transfer via SCP/SFTP - Users can migrate data onto and off of the cluster using secure file transfer protocols, also based on the underlying SSH protocol suite. The utilities, which are also freely available (VS Code, OpenSSH, WinSCP, etc.) work similar to historical FTP clients but securely authenticate and transfer the files between destination.
Table of Contents
Getting Started
About the Cluster
Research on DEAC
Reference Documentation