• ARC header

      ARC

      Why run programmes all night on your desktop PC?

  • Why run programmes all night on your desktop when ARC can do it for you?

    Advanced Research Computing (ARC), part of Oxford University IT Services, is a high performance computing facility that has been made available to Oxford Brookes University students and researchers.

    The service enables users to submit computationally-intensive jobs, for example a vehicle crash test simulation, to ARC for processing in a fraction of the time it would take on standard desktop PCs at Oxford Brookes. 

    New project and teaching groups can apply to use this facility. There is a startup cost per group, covering installation of software and usernames, and a three-hour training session is chargeable. Charges are calculated according to core hours of computer time. 

    • hardware includes 5792 Haswell cores, 1728 SandyBridge/IvyBridge cores, dedicated GPU processing, SGI shared memort system, storage 
    • large number of pre-installed applications, libraries and tools 
    • user account/password management using Arc's LDAP system
    • remote connections are made to ARC using SSH. Windows users can use the Putty SSH client
    • 15GB home storage and 5TB of temporary storage per group/project
    • usage charged per processor core/hour
    • credits for processor time are purchased in advance; user groups can check their balance at any time
    • priority job submission available at extra cost
    • dedicated email support with ticketing system
    • ARC training courses available
    • ARC services utilise the Linux operating system for its abilities to provide secure remote access to its systems and the ability to manage many different types of scientific applications across a range of different hardware.

    New project and teaching groups can apply to use the facility. There is a startup cost per group, covering installation of software and usernames, and a three-hour training session is chargeable. Charges are calculated according to core hours of compute time.

    To obtain a quotation, for either inclusion in a research bid or to include as part of an existing project, please complete this short form, providing as much information as possible. 

    On submission an IT Business Partnership Manager will be in touch to discuss requirements.  Upon successful agreement of the quotation the requester will then need to follow the normal purchasing process through their respective faculty. Once ARC receive the purchase order they will set up the account/user group and the key contact is advised to arrange training.  

    There are currently five project groups: 

    • hls-ecoevolgenomics (Saad Arif) 
    • hls-kanda (Ravinder Kanda) 
    • hls-newbury (Dianne Newbury) 
    • mems-staff (Neil Fellows) 
    • mems-students (Neil Fellows)

      • Access to ARC is administered by the project leader (the name in brackets). Please contact them for issues related to ARC accounts and access. 

    Brookes IT will be the initial point of contact for support, unless users approach ARC direct. The scope of Brookes support is strictly limited to issues at our end, for example: 

    • The machine the job is being submitted on, for example, network connection. 
    • Licensing issues: if the job does not run for this reason, check the relevant licence server is up, that there are free licences in the pool and that the licence is current. 
    • Note that Brookes IT cannot assist with issues around use of the ARC system, including connecting to ARC on their machine; this is the responsibility of ARC. Users should have received initial basic training on how to use the system. 
    If initial troubleshooting does not resolve the issue, the incident must be escalated to ARC by adding support@arc.ox.ac.uk to the watch list. Users can also visit https://www.arc.ox.ac.uk/contact-us to view documentation and FAQs.