Next steps

Overview

Teaching: 10 min
Exercises: 0 min

Questions

• Where can I get further help on using Cirrus?

• What other training is available to me?

• How can I get access to Cirrus for my research?

Objectives

• Be aware of the available Cirrus documentation.

• Be aware of what other training is available.

• Be aware of the Cirrus access routes.

Cirrus Service Desk

Contacting the Cirrus Service Desk is the easiest way to get in touch with the service to ask any questions you have or report issues with your use of the service. You can contact the Cirrus Service Desk at: support@cirrus.ac.uk.

If you have a particular issue that you would like to discuss in more depth with an expert from the Cirrus CSE service you can book a callback from them at a time of your convenience. Please contact the service desk if you want to book a callback with a description of what you want to discuss and your preferred time(s) for a callback.

Documentation

The Cirrus service has extensive documentation available at:

• Cirrus Documentation

This documentation covers:

• Quickstart Guides to using Cirrus for users who wish to use pre-installed software and users who want to compile and develop their own software.
• Cirrus User and Best Practice Guide covering all aspects of the service with basic information to allow you to use the service effectively for your research and more advanced technical topics to help you improve your use of the service.
• Information on the research software and software libraries available on the service.

Additional Training

There is also lots of training available through the ARCHER2 service covering many different topics and to suit many different levels. Following on from this course, you may be particularly interested in:

• Understanding Package Performance - a course designed to improve the efficiency of your use of HPC systems.
• Using package X efficiently on Cirrus - these are a series of courses covering some of the major modelling and simulation software packages used on Cirrus that cover how to get the most out of the Cirrus system when using that particular software.
• Software/Data Carpentry - improve your software and data analysis skills with these official Carpentries courses.
• Reproducible computational environments using containers - this course provides an introduction to the use of Containers in a research setting.

Details of courses, the upcoming schedule and information on how to register can be found on the ARCHER2 training pages.

Getting access to Cirrus for your research

There are a number of different routes to obtain access to Cirrus resources.

• Cirrus Instant Access - Small amounts of time to test Cirrus, provide proof of concept, or obtain scaling information for full applications (EPSRC remit science only).
• Cirrus Scottish Academic Access - larger amounts of time for research groups based in Scotland. This funding can only be applied for once per academic group.
• Cirrus resources via research grants - larger amounts of time associated with the research project proposed. How this works depends on the grant awarding body.
• UKRI Access to HPC or Pioneer Project resource calls - large amounts of resource for up to a year.

More information on these access routes is available on the Cirrus access page

Key Points

• Cirrus has a lot of documentation available.

• There are lots of training opportunities available.

• You can get access to Cirrus resources via a number of different routes.