COVID19 related requests

In the wake of the COVID19 pandemic, Compute Canada offered to help researchers working on this topic. If this is your case, when you contact Technical support, please be as specific as possible when describing your needs. Here are a few scenarios that could apply to you, and what information you should provide.

What to include when writing to us for support

Note that the Principal Investigator (PI) should be the one making the request.

Always include the following:

• A short description of the research you will be doing. Please include a justification of how it will help solve the current crisis.
• A description of what kind of support you need (see below)

Increase of job priority

Specific jobs

• First, submit your jobs
• Specify the list of job identifiers which require an increased priority.

Short term allocation

Please provide us with the following:

• Description of the proposed COVID-19 research: What is the specific research problem you are trying to solve? Why are advanced research computing resources critical for the proposed research project?
• When applicable, provide details of any funding for COVID-19 research available, in particular: funding agency, the amount of funding awarded, and portion of the award dedicated to computational research.
• What are the expected research outcomes of the proposed project?
• Start date
• End date
• Resources requested for the period :
  • Number of CPU cores
  • Number of GPU
  • Amount of storage for /project and/or /nearline
• Preferred system
• Please provide a justification for the resources requested and the system selection
• Any software, security or other special requirements

Increase of storage space

• Specify whether you are asking for scratch or project space storage
• Specify how much space you need
• Specify if you need an increased quota of number of files

Domain specific support

If you require domain specific support, please contact Technical support with your question. Mention that this is for COVID-19 research, and we will try to prioritize as best as we can.

Other available resources

Note that the following resources are also available to Canadian researchers

• The COVID-19 HPC Consortium allows researchers to apply for resources here.
• Google announced that they are making 20M$ worth of Google Cloud credits available for research on COVID-19. Details here.
• Digital Ocean has offered resource for COVID-19 researchers: https://www.digitalocean.com/community/pages/covid-19