Welcome to FarmShare¶

FarmShare is Stanford’s community computing environment. It is intended for use in coursework and unsponsored research. It is not approved for use with high-risk data, or for use in sponsored research.

FarmShare evolved from the old, public UNIX cluster, once located on the second floor of Sweet Hall, which was itself a successor to systems like the University’s original timeshare service, LOTS. The latest iteration of FarmShare with hardware and major OS update came online early 2024.

Resources on FarmShare are focused on making it easier to learn how to use research computing including “scheduler” or “distributed resource management system” to submit compute jobs. By using FarmShare, new researchers can more easily adapt to using larger clusters when they have big projects that involve using federally funded resources, shared Stanford clusters, or on a small grant funded cluster. Full SUNet (or sponsorship) required.

What’s New¶

Key changes on the new FarmShare environment include:

• Major OS upgrade to Ubuntu 22.04 LTS which brings many changes, improvements and provides LTS stability.
• New Hardware with CPU and memory improvements.
• New browser based access with Open OnDemand v3.
• Updated Open Ondemand apps: JupyterLabs, RStudio, and VS Code.
• Updated Scheduler (resource manager) to Slurm v24.11
• Home directory path updated to /home/users/USER. Please use the variable $HOME instead of hard coding directory paths.

Cluster Components¶

FarmShare consists of three classes of servers:

• Login nodes called rice servers where you log in to run commands, access files, submit jobs, and review results. The rice servers also have access to Stanford AFS. These servers can be accessed via ssh and can be used for interactive work. Some resource limits are enforced, so if you need to run a long-running or compute- and/or memory-intensive process you should submit a job

• Compute nodes called iron, rye and wheat servers. They have more CPU power and more memory than the rice servers, and are meant for both interactive jobs (where you log in to control what happens) and batch jobs (where everything runs from a script that you submit)

• GPU compute nodes called oat servers. They are similar to the compute nodes mentioned above, except that they also have GPUs installed

FarmShare currently has 4 rice servers (login nodes) along with 26 compute nodes (iron, rye, wheat, oat nodes). User storage for $HOME along with global /scratch space is available on all nodes.

Eligibility¶

FarmShare is available to anyone who has a full-service SUNetID. A full-service SUNetID is one that has email service; if you can successfully get to Stanford Webmail, then you are eligible to use FarmShare for academic work. If you do not already have a full-service SUNetID (maybe because you are a visiting researcher), you can get a sponsored full-service SUNetID. Read more about SUNetID levels.

Note that, in order to get a sponsored SUNetID, a monthly fee will be charged by University IT. Only people with spending authority may sponsor a SUNetID. Sponsorships can be obtained and paid for through Sponsorship Manager. Current rates are available from the Sponsored Account Rates page.

FarmShare is meant for low- or moderate-risk data, and is primarily intended for coursework or research purposes. It is not meant for sponsored research (where you have a dedicated source of funding), and is not approved for handling high-risk data.

Sponsored Research¶

If you are doing sponsored or departmental research, then FarmShare might not be the right place for you. Instead, if the data you are working with is all low-risk, then you should consider our Sherlock Cluster.

If you are working with high-risk data then you should consider our Nero GCP or Carina Computing platform.

If you are working with complex AI you should consider our Marlowe Cluster.

Getting Help¶

Most FarmShare support is provided during business hours, either via email or during academic-year office hours.

For email support, send a message to srcc-support. Make sure you have “FarmShare” somewhere in the subject line, and please be as detailed as possible with your request.