Supported Services
The High-Performance Computing Core Facility (HPCCF) provides best-effort support to UC Davis researchers to maintain high-performance computing resources. Currently, the HPCCF offers support for 10 clusters across campus. The HPCCF provides best-effort support from 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM, except on university holidays. Service requests can be initiated by sending an email to hpc-help@ucdavis.edu.
I. The HPCCF provides Level 1 (high priority) support for the following items:
Account Management
- Create / Maintain Accounts
- Assign System and Group Privileges
- Manage Job Scheduler (Slurm Queue)
- Maintain and develop the High-Performance Personnel Onboarding web portal
Hardware Support
Clients will receive Priority support until their hardware reaches 5 years of age. Clients in existing supported clusters will be offered priority support at no cost while the hardware remains under vendor maintenance contract.
HPCCF will support client purchased hardware for up to 7 years, subject to rack and hardware replacement fees, and purchasing maintenance support from HPCCF at an hourly rate.
Existing hardware older than 7 years will not be supported. Hardware in racks maintained by HPCCF will be decommissioned. Clients will be entirely responsible for paying rack fees should they choose to maintain old hardware in other racks. Should the Client wish to retain possession of decommissioned hardware outside of HPCCF, they may do so at their expense and with the approval of their Dean’s office and college IT.
| New Hardware through HPCCF | Existing Hardware <5 years old | Existing Hardware >5 years | Existing Hardware >7 years old | |
| HPCCF | Priority Support for 5 years | Priority support until 5 years | Maintenance support | No support |
| Outside HPCCF | No support | Priority support for the life of the maintenance contract |
Storage Management
- Provisioning primary and archival storage for college-owned HPC
- Provisioning HPCCF-owned primary and archival storage per HPCCF published rates
Onboarding Consultation
- HPCCF is able to consult with principal investigators and researchers to determine high-performance computing needs and assists with onboarding.
Software Installation
- The HPCCF maintains a central repository of software modules for use across the systems that HPCCF supports. These include, but are not limited to software programming languages such as R and Python, software libraries, and scientific use programs. The HPCCF can install or update some software. Please see our Software Installation Policy.
- The HPCCF maintains compliance with UC Davis ISO and UCOP IS-3 mandates.
- Common software install parameters and dependent modules
- HPCCF maintains Globus endpoints for all supported high-performance clusters.
System tuning for compute, MPI, GPU, network, storage, and the Slurm job scheduler.
- The HPCCF will employ best practices for high-performance computing where available to ensure that supported systems are running as optimally as possible for general use. These best practices include tuning file systems, providing optimal network connectivity, CPU resources, and the Slurm job scheduler.
User Support
- Resolving login issues related to hardware or operating system issues
II. The HPCCF provides the following Tier 2, medium-priority services based on resource availability.
User Support
- Monitoring system resource availability
- Installation of additional software dependencies in the central software repository
III. Additional services not listed here are available at the published HPC System Administrator rate upon resource availability.
The HPCCF maintains agreements with individual colleges for unit-specific services as defined by a memorandum of understanding.