CSDE maintains Microsoft Windows Servers for general use through remote access. These permit anyone with a CSDE Windows Network account to sign into our file servers, access our datasets, and run statistical software from anywhere in the world on a familiar Windows desktop environment.
If you don’t yet have a CSDE Computing Account, please request a CSDE account.
See here for a complete tutorial on accessing the CSDE Windows terminal servers.
There are currently three general-purpose CSDE Windows terminal servers available:
These servers carry a full complement of ready-to-use statistical and social-sciences software packages. The three terminal servers have nearly identical software installs and provide access to all your personal and project files. Each has 2x 4 core 2.7GHz Xeon CPU (16 cores with hyper-threading enabled) and 128GB memory.
There are four drives available for use on CSDE terminal servers. Once logged onto a terminal server, they can be found in the My Computer menu.
| Drive | Use | Backed Up | Private | Share-Able |
| H: | The H: drive is your home directory, where personal files can be saved. It can only be accessed by you and is backed up regularly. |
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| O: | The O: drive is for administrative documents and is only available to CSDE personnel. |
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| R: | The R: drive is for storage of project and data sets. Multiple users working on the same project can have read/write access to files/folders. |
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| T: | The T: drive is used for temporary storage and file sharing. T: is not backed up, so save copies elsewhere. |
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Be careful not to permanently store data on the desktop, in the C: drive, or in the Downloads folder. These locations are regularly cleared of files to free up space, so any files lost may be impossible to recover.
CSDE’s Simulation Cluster is a group of 10 Windows terminal servers featuring simulation-specific software intended for computationally intensive work. The Sim Cluster, made possible by funding from the UW Student Technology Fee Committee, is available for use by students and faculty from all CSDE-affiliated departments.
To start using the the Simulation Clusters, you must first submit a request to gain access.
The Sim Cluster is rebooted on the last Friday of each month and is therefore offline from 3:00 AM to 10:00 AM PST while we apply updates. Please plan your work accordingly.
To start a new session for an additional simulation job, simply open another Remote Desktop Connection window to a different sim node (e.g., sim5.csde.washington.edu).
To resume a job that’s currently running, reconnect to it by logging back in directly to its node. (The My Computer icon on your session’s desktop will indicate which cluster node you’re using; see the image to the right.) For example, if you disconnect from SIM3, your session would continue running there. To reenter and check the status of jobs, you need to use Remote Desktop Connection to connect back to the Sim node with your job.
Recent information on Sim Cluster memory and CPU usage is available below.
Total memory of each sim node is 192GB. When memory usage exceeds 90% (185GB or more), the sim node will respond very slowly – please size your jobs to avoid this scenario.
Missing data usually means the sim node is not responsive to the monitor program, which indicates a lack of system resources.
Unix systems are characterized by various concepts: the use of plain text for storing data, a hierarchical file system, treatment of devices and certain types of inter-process communication (IPC) as files, and the use of a large number of small programs that can be strung together through a command line interpreter using pipes (as opposed to using a single monolithic program that includes all of the same functionality).
You must have a CSDE Unix account to use the CSDE Unix and Mosix computers. The following people qualify for Unix accounts at CSDE:
The parties above may request an account by completing this form.
If you’re an offsite or new UW member without a UWNETID, or wish to sponsor a UWNetID for a visiting researcher, click here
If you already have a UWNETID, manage your UW services at the UWNetID management pages here.
All CSDE Unix systems allow incoming connections exclusively via Secure Shell (SSH) v2.
The following systems are available to all CSDE Unix Account holders
| Host: | Model Name: | cpu MHz: | CPU Cores: | MemTotal: | SwapTotal: |
| union.csde.washington.edu | Sun Fire x4170 M2 | 2.53 Ghz | 2 | 72 Gig | 10 Gig |
| libra.csde.washington.edu | Sun Fire x4170 M2 | 2.53 Ghz | 2 | 72 Gig | 10 Gig |
More information and instructions can be found for Unix programs, such as X2Go and NoMachine, on our “Connecting to Unix Terminal Servers” section of our tutorials page.
CSDE offers Sun Solaris and Debian Linux servers with software specialized for demographic research and statistics. The machines are available to all CSDE Unix account holders and can be accessed using ssh or X11.
Everyone with a CSDE Unix account may access union.csde.washington.edu and libra.csde.washington.edu. Both have the following system specifications:
The following software is available on application servers:
High-performance computing is handled by the CSDE pool in Hyak, the UW-Wide High Performance Computing cluster. All Hyak access is authenticated by UW NetID and requires a physical PRN generator/eToken/keyfob. If you are a UW student, you can also join the UW HPC club and access the larger STF Hyak pool. (You can still connect from the CSDE Unix systems to Hyak if you use this allocation pool.)
To use the CSDE Hyak nodes, all of the following must be done:
You’ll need to SSH into Hyak using your UW NetID username and password. It will ask you for your eToken number as well (i.e., “enter PRN”). Use ssh UWNetID@hyak.washington.edu, subsitituting your user name in place of “UWNetID.” The collaboration file system can be mounted at \\lolo.washington.edu\collaboration\hyak\csde. This should work from the CSDE Terminal servers or other campus systems using UW NetID logins. Please create a subdirectory there named with your UW NetID if you want to use it to move files in/out of Hyak. Once you are on the Hyak system, the share above is located at ls /lolo/collaboration/hyak/csde/.
Please subscribe to this list for Hyak status updates.
The basic gist of the Hyak cluster is this: you will SSH into the head node of the Hyak system, where you can do minor work or ask the system for an “interactive node” you can ssh directly to and pound away. The “real” way is to make a batch submit script and submit it to the scheduler. Once you set up your SSH key relationship, you won’t need to use your eToken often, but keep it around. In a standard Hyak node on the batch system, all software is a “module,” so you’ll have to load the “R” or “RevolutionR” module. Take a look at “Environment Modules” here.
Additional information is available below:
Have a lot of jobs you’d like to run? Using the backfill queue offers the working potential of thousands of CPU cores.
NOTE: Each job in the backfill queue can only run for 2 hours before being shut down, so divide your jobs up accordingly!
If you’re running batches of serial jobs, read the following first:
If you’re running parallel jobs, read the following first:
More information is available here:
If you are a currently enrolled UW student paying the Student Technology Fee, you should join the UW HPC Club. This will allow you to submit jobs to be run in the student node allocation as well as the CSDE node allocation. You can then run your job on any of 3 queues:
Blades are deployed for three years. Blade deployments may only be extended if there is no demand for the slots they occupy. Because Hyak currently has lots of unoccupied slots, this has meant that nodes have continued to run beyond their 3-year minimum lifespan. As long as the nodes continue to operate, they have remained in the original owner’s queues.
Click here for Hyak utilization data and here for the inventory.
Please remember to acknowledge Hyak in any media featuring results that Hyak helped generate. When citing Hyak, please use the following language:
“This work was facilitated through the use of advanced computational, storage, and networking infrastructure provided by the Hyak supercomputer system at the University of Washington.”
When you cite Hyak, please let us know by emailing help@uw.edu with “Hyak” as the first word in the subject along with a citation we can use in the body of the message. Likewise, please let us know of successful funding proposals and research collaborations to which Hyak contributed.
Hyak is a CSDE resource, so remember to cite CSDE as well! Click here for more information on acknowledging support from CSDE.
CSDE also hosts grant-funded project servers, websites, and databases on its secure server. We host Windows Terminal Servers equipped for managing sensitive data and file-backup services. Affiliates can access these services with a yearly fee or ongoing grant funding support. Contact Matt Weatherford for further details.
Normally, one has to be on campus to view the electronic resources offered by UW Libraries. However, CSDE allows remote access through CSDE’s “Windows Terminal Server,” which all CSDE Affiliates are invited to use. Once you are logged into the server, it allows you to search the UW Libraries systems and use their resources as if you were on campus.
If you don’t have a CSDE Computing Account, you will need to get one here. Then you can connect to our Terminal Servers using a Remote Desktop Client from your home, office, or elsewhere. (See “Terminal Servers” above for help connecting.)
To find a journal article in the UW database, follow the steps below.