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Palmetto 2 Account Setup Procedure

Accounts on Palmetto 2 are managed through our resource and allocation management tool, ColdFront. In ColdFront, only faculty can do the initial project creation steps.

Steps for Students​

Important

If you are a student, then a faculty member will need to sponsor your account.

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Once your faculty sponsor has completed the below steps AND the allocation has been approved, you can use the Palmetto 2 Account Status Check Tool to see if your account is ready.

The correct faculty member to ask varies depending on what you are trying to achieve.

Using Palmetto to participate in an RCD workshop

If you have registered for an RCD workshop, then no action is required.

The instructor for the workshop will grant temporary Palmetto access to registered participants before the workshop begins. This temporary access will expire after the workshop ends.

Using Palmetto for a specific class or course

Please ask the instructor of the course to sponsor your Palmetto account.

Your instructor does not have to be a Palmetto user. They simply need to complete the steps for faculty members below to grant you access to Palmetto.

Using Palmetto for undergraduate research (through CI or Creative Inquiry)

Please ask the mentor for your CI project to sponsor your Palmetto account.

Your CI mentor does not have to be a Palmetto user. They simply need to complete the steps for faculty members below to grant you access to Palmetto.

To learn more about undergraduate research at Clemson, visit the Creative Inquiry program homepage.

Using Palmetto for graduate research (PhD and Master's students)

Please ask the Principal Investigator (PI) or faculty advisor for your research project to sponsor your Palmetto account.

Your PI or advisor does not have to be a Palmetto user. They simply need to complete the steps for faculty members below to grant you access to Palmetto.

Steps for Faculty Members​

To gain access to Palmetto 2, faculty must:

  1. Navigate to ColdFront: coldfront.rcd.clemson.edu.
  2. Create one or more projects in ColdFront. Projects in ColdFront link users to resource allocations. Faculty can have multiple projects to separate research groups and classes.
  3. Add initial users to the project(s). Project owners and managers can also bulk add accounts by entering a list of usernames in the search field. Optionally, the project owner can delegate a project user to be a manager, allowing a trusted user (e.g. graduate student or lab coordinator) to request allocations and manage users on the project owner's behalf.
  4. Request an allocation for Palmetto 2 General Queue. The allocation is no cost and has no CPU hour limit.
  5. If the faculty has purchased nodes on Palmetto, they can add an allocation for their node owner queue to the project and gain priority access, longer run time, and other benefits for jobs running on their hardware.

Once the allocation is approved, the allocation becomes active for 1 year (and can be renewed). The users added to the Palmetto 2 General Queue allocation will have access to the general work1 partition in Slurm within 30 minutes. Users can use the Palmetto 2 Account Status Check Tool to see if their account is ready.

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Users can be added and removed from the project or allocation anytime after the initial project creation. Changes to users in active allocations should take effect quickly (within 30 minutes).

We have a ColdFront documentation section that covers more details. If there are any issues, questions, or feedback, please submit a support request.

You can also schedule an office hours appointment with us to ask questions or walk through the project creation or allocation request process together. Use the Book ColdFront Support link from our office hours options list.

Project Review

Once a year, each project is due for a review. During the review period, the project owner cannot request or renew any allocations. When requested, follow our project review documentation to complete the review process.

Onboarding​

We request all new users to Palmetto attend an onboarding session to become familiar with the cluster. When you add new students to your allocation, please send them to our onboarding page to schedule a session.