Fall Research Computing Bootcamp starts September 16
Popular Python, Cloud and HPC workshops are back. Fall Research Computing Bootcamp starts September 16! All fall workshops will be held online and there is no cost to attend.
Interested in more research computing resources? Check out the Research Computing page to see our list of services and to access video recordings from past bootcamps.
Research Computing Bootcamp Schedule
September 2022
| Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday |
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1
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2
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5
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6
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7
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8
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9
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12
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13
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14
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15
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16
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19
9 am–12:30 pm
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20
9 am–12 noon
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21
9–11 am
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22
9 am–12 noon
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23
9 am–12 noon
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26
9:30 am–12 noon
1–2:30
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27
9 am–12 noon
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28
9:30 am–12 noon
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29
9 am–12 noon
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30
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October 2022
| Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday |
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3
9:30 am–12 noon
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4
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5
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6
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7
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10
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11
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12
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13
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14
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17
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18
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19
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20
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21
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24
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25
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26
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27
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28
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31
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See something you like? Register below! Please only sign up for a bootcamp if you are confident you can attend.
Introduction to the Digital Research Alliance of Canada and Bootcamp overview
Date: Friday, September 16
Time: 10–11 am
Location: Online
Facilitator: John Simpson
Not sure which Bootcamp sessions to take? Wondering how your particular research project fits into the Digital Research Alliance of Canada? Here's how to get started.
The first 30 minutes of this workshop are a high-level overview of what is offered to researchers by the Digital Research Alliance of Canada, the workshops in this bootcamp series, and how the bootcamps set researchers up to use the Alliance. Remaining time is an open period for questions.
HPC: Shell Basics
Date: Monday, September 19, 2022
Time: 9 am–12:30 pm
Location: Online
Facilitator: John Simpson
This 3.5-hour workshop will introduce you to the basic interface for using a High-Performance Computing (HPC) environment, the Linux Shell (a command line environment). You will learn how to log in to a remote HPC machine and perform common tasks including moving through directories, viewing files, and moving files on and off the system. This is a slightly truncated version of the face-to-face workshop that we run regularly, with some modifications for the online environment.
Participants will need a computer that has a strong internet connection to handle video streaming. They will also need software to access the HPC systems that will be used as part of the course. Instructions on installing such software will be shared with registrants a few days before the course.
HPC: Scripting Basics
Date: Wednesday September 21, 2022
Time: 9–11 am
Location: Online
Facilitator: John Simpson
In this 2 hour, direct follow-up to HPC: Shell we will spend additional time looking at writing scripts within the Linux Shell as part of automating tasks. You will learn more about writing and using scripts to get your work done, including how to write loops and how to generalize your scripts by allowing them to take inputs directly from the command line. This workshop will not cover the mechanics of submitting work to the HPC Clusters via scripts but is instead an optional preparatory workshop for HPC: Essentials, which covers this.
Participants will need a computer that has a strong internet connection to handle video streaming. They will also need software to access the HPC systems that will be used as part of the course. Instructions on installing such software will be shared with registrants a few days before the course.
HPC: Essentials
Date: Tuesday, September 20, 2022
Time: 9 am–12 noon
Location: Online
Facilitator: Kamil Marcinkowski
This is the second workshop in the series designed to move researchers from no previous experience using High-Performance Computing (HPC) clusters towards a position of confidence and competence. This workshop focuses on the mechanics of submitting programs (“jobs”) to the clusters so that they can be scheduled and run.
Led by Kamil Marcinkowski, scheduling team lead for the Digital Research Alliance of Canada, this workshop will contain extra emphasis on interacting with the scheduler to ensure that your work is getting done rather than sitting in the queue. This workshop provides that background in a friendly, jargon-minimized, hands-on environment.
HPC: Parallelism
Date: Thursday, September 22, 2022
Time: 9 am–12 noon
Location: Online
Facilitator: Kamil Marcinkowski
Are you having a hard time understanding parallel computing and High Performance Computing (HPC), such as thread, process, job, vector processor, core, CUDA, MPI and more? This session will provide you with a map to understand parallel computing as well as descriptions of the terms and concepts and how they relate to each other. Like any good map, it will let you know which concepts and terms you need to know in greater detail, and how they relate to what you are trying to do. With this map in hand you will be in a better position to decide when and how to take advantage of the parallel computing architectures that are available to you.
This workshop will include a simple and practical live demonstration running and viewing different types of parallel programs/concepts on an HPC cluster.
HPC: Interactive Tuning & Debugging
Date: Friday, September 23, 2022
Time: 9 am–12 noon
Location: Online
Facilitator: Kamil Marcinkowski
Your research has gone beyond the capabilities of your laptop and you're now getting started with the cluster. Now what? How do you figure out what resources your jobs need on the cluster? What do you do when things go wrong?
This workshop will share secrets of interactive cluster usage so you can schedule work efficiently, learn how to fix problems when things go wrong, and use the system for interactive code development. High performance computing (HPC) clusters are composed of Linux machines, understanding and controlling work on a cluster is an extension of the skills in doing the same on a Linux machine. You will learn how to debug by telling how many resources: memory, open files, how much disk IO, Iops, and how much network traffic a program uses.
RAC: Best Practices
Date: Monday, September 26, 2022
Time: 1–2:30 pm
Location: Online
Facilitator: John Simpson, Kamil Marcinkowski and Carol Ladner
The Resource Allocation Competition (RAC) from the Digital Research Alliance of Canada is how many researchers across Canada gain access to computing and storage resources to assist with their research. This can range from a few dozen cores and some extra terabytes of storage to thousands of cores and hundreds of terabytes of storage. This annual competition is open for applications each October.
This session will quickly cover the most important things to consider when submitting an application to maximize success and then open the floor to questions.
Introduction to Git
Date: Tuesday, September 27 and Thursday, September 29, 2022
Time: 9 am–12 noon
Location: Online
Facilitator: Chris Want
This hands-on workshop (two half-days) will introduce students to central topics around revision control using a popular program called Git. Students will learn how to track changes in projects, how to create branches for development and experimentation, how to roll back changes, and how to participate in GitHub, a website that manages the source code for many important open source projects on the internet.
HPC: Shell Basics (or equivalent experience working with Bash) is a prerequisite.
Cloud Intro
Date: Monday, September 26, 2022
Time: 9:30 am–12 noon
Location: Online
Facilitator: Erming Pei
You may have already heard about the Cloud or Cloud computing, or maybe you've seen this term everywhere. However, what does that mean? How does it differ from traditional computing? How can you use and access it for research purposes?
The Cloud Intro session will start with an overview of Cloud computing including the evolution of HPC/ARC computer technologies, public and private Clouds, and the Cloud deployed by the Digital Research Alliance of Canada, followed by an introduction to national Cloud sites, computing resources and different types of Cloud storage. Finally, you will be guided on how to apply for and access cloud resources as a pre-requisite of the following two sessions: Cloud Hands-on and Cloud Advanced.
Cloud Hands-on
Date: Wednesday, September 28, 2022
Time: 9:30 am–12 noon
Location: Online
Facilitator: Erming Pei
In this session, you will be guided step by step on how to use the Alliance cloud system including launching your own instances or virtual machines and setting up the environment. You will also be shown how to conveniently access various research computing software repositories on the basis of CVMFS, a potent and convenient research software distribution system.
Attendees are strongly recommended to take the Cloud Intro session and to register for an account with the Digital Research Alliance of Canada before attending this session. If you haven't, you can still join us using guest user credentials.
Cloud Advanced/Containerization
Date: Monday, October 3, 2022
Time: 9:30 am–12 noon
Location: Online
Facilitator: Erming Pei
Containerization is a hot topic in cloud computing. The target of this session is a broad overview of containerization and related technologies. It's intended to lead into future sessions that will go deeper into each specific containerization subject.
We will start by demonstrating what a container is and explaining all of the benefits, including a comparison between containers and virtual machines. Docker, the most popular containerization tool, will be introduced with a discussion of concepts and basic operations and how to interact with image repositories.
Two other tools for implementing containerization in specific scenarios (Singularity and Kubernetes) will also be briefly introduced. Time permitting, we will demonstrate examples of using Singularity and using Minikube (a simplified Kubernetes tool).
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