Computer Science has two generally-available “clusters”, faculty and iLab. The sections below will describe each. Each cluster has its own home directories. So if you have access to both iLab and faculty. A common file system is shared by all clusters, /common/users. Your directory on it is /common/users/NETID. Quotas on /common/users are 100 GB.
Systems Status
Faculty
Faculty offices, plus some servers. There are two Faculty Machines, constance.cs and porthos.cs. However, we recommend logging in to faculty.cs.rutgers.edu. That will give you either constance.cs or porthos.cs, randomly. If one is down, it will give you the one that is up.
These are not very powerful systems. They’re intended primarily to keep records in an environment with no students. Serious computing is normally done on the research cluster.
Student
Our student system is called iLab/rLab cluster, consisting of a set of large servers ( some with A4000/RTX1080/2080 Ti GPUs) and desktops in iLabs (2nd floor Hill Center 248, 252, 254) and grad student offices. Most students access these systems remotely, using WebLogin, SSH clients like SSH command on MacOS and Linux, or Bitvise Client on Windows. (See Video tutorial or SSH HowTo), X2GO and Windows Remote Desktop. Please use the alias ilab.cs.rutgers.edu, which will give you one of the four large servers. You can also look at the iLab status page to find a desktop system that isn’t heavily used.
More information about Student systems and instructions on using them
Instructional Laboratory (iLab) Systems: Announcements and information about rooms
Details iLab System Specs
- 50+ of the iLab desktop systems and 31 machines with Nvidia GTX1060 GPU.
- 4 iLab servers each have 8 Nvidia A4000 GPUs with 512GB-1TB of memory.
- 3 rLab servers each have 8 Nvidia RTX 1080Ti GPUs with 512GB-1TB of memory.
- 1 rLab server with 8 Titan X GPU with 512GB of memory
- 1 iLab server each has 8 Nvidia RTX 2080ti GPUs with 256GB of memory.
Private Research Systems
Many faculty research groups own machines generally available for CS researchers in their group. The list is growing fast. Access to these systems is normally controlled by the head of each research group.
High-performance systems: OARC
OARC is a University group that provides high-performance computing. Computer science, in general, doesn’t have a conventional HPC cluster. We concentrate on GPUs and more specialized hardware. For large-scale HPC, OARC is the best source. They have a large cluster, Amarel. It is intended as a “condo” cluster. I.e., grants buy nodes and are guaranteed at least as much capacity as they purchased. The cost is matched by the University. However, some capacity is available for those who haven’t bought into the system, particularly for course work and student use.
For more information see the OARC web site.
Some of OARCs nodes have GPUs, typically Nvidia.
Virtual machines
LCSR can provide virtual machines for researchers and for use by classes.
Researchers commonly use VMs for web servers and other support services. We normally put those VMs on the same servers used for LCSR infrastructure.
For course use, we talk with the instructor to determine the configuration and software needed, then create one small VM per user. We can also create limited VMs for grad students. These VMs are placed on one of two large (1 TB each) VM servers purchased specifically for instruction.
Account Cleanup
Your CS Linux account is normally deactivated when you no longer have a role in Computer Science or are no longer taking any CS classes. Normally account deactivation is done about 4 months or a semester after. You can reactivate the account if you register for a qualified CS class again. For graduated CS Major, we normally send a warning to your official university address NetID@rutgers.edu to warn you about account deactivation.
For help with our systems or immediate assistance, visit LCSR Operator at CoRE 235 or call 848-445-2443. Otherwise, see CS HelpDesk. Don’t forget to include your NetID along with descriptions of your problem.