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Zest is the Syracuse University researching computing high-performance computing (HPC) cluster. Zest is a non-interactive Linux environment intended to run analyses that require extensive parallelism or running for extended durations.

Warning
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titleIDEs and Development

Zest is not intended to be used as a development environment. Activities on the cluster should be limited to submitting jobs, doing light editing with a text editor such as nano or vim, and running small tests that use a single core for no more than a few minutes. The use of IDEs such as Jupyter, Spyder, VSCode, etc is prohibited as these programs can interfere with other users of the system or, in the worst case, impact the system as a whole. If you need a development environment please contact us and other more appropriate resources can be provided.

Tip

Looking for OrangeGrid? While similar, the Zest and OrangeGrid clusters are unique environments. Information about OrangeGrid is available on the OrangeGrid (OG) | HTCondor Support home page. 

On This Page

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Accessing Zest

To access Zest, simply make an SSH connection using your NetID and specifying the login node you have been assigned. The example below uses 'its-zest-login2.syr.edu'. Refer to the access email you received from Research Computing staff with your node information. The cluster supports connection via CMD, programs like Putty, and the use of SCP and WinSCP. 

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titleExample SSH Connection
ssh netid@its-zest-login2.syr.edu
Tip
titleOff Campus?

Off-campus networks cannot access the cluster directly. Users off campus need to connect to campus via Remote Desktop Services (RDS). RDS will provide you with a Windows 10 desktop that has access to your G: drive, campus OneDrive, and the research clusters. Once connected, SSH and SCP are available from the Windows command prompt or you can use Putty and WinSCP which are also installed. Full instructions and details for connection to RDS are available on the RDS home page. Note that Azure VPN is an alternative option, but not available for all users. See the Azure VPN page for more details. 


Slurm Basics

Slurm Commands

CommandDescription 

sinfo

Show node information

squeue

Show job queue

sacct

Display job accounting information

sbatch [script name]

Submits job script

salloc [options] [command]

Starts an interactive job

srun [options] [command]

Launch parallel job steps, usually runs in a SBATCH script

srun --pty [options] bash

Launch interactive job on a worker node

sstat [job id]

Display running job status

scancel [job id]

Cancel job

Slurm Environmental Variables

CommandDescription

$SLURM_JOB_ID

Job ID

$SLURM_JOB_NAME

Job name

$SLURM_SUBMIT_DIR

Submit directory from login node

$SLURM_SUBMIT_HOST

Submission host

$SLURM_NTASKS

Total number of tasks for job

$SLURM_NODEID

Index to node relative to job

$SLURM_PROCID

Index to process relative to job

$SLURM_CPUS_ON_NODE

Number of cores/node


Submitting Jobs


Zest FAQ


Additional Zest Resources

Link1

Link2


Additional Research Computing Resources

ITS Research Computing Home

ITS Remote Desktop Services (RDS)

OrangeGrid/HTCondor Support Home Page

Research Computing Events and Colloquia

Getting Help

Question about Research Computing? Any questions about using or acquiring research computing resources or access can be directed at researchcomputing@syr.edu.