Partek Flow | crc.pitt.edu | University of Pittsburgh

1.If you have not already done so, request a user account/allocation on the Center for Research Computing (CRC) cluster by filling out the required information. Principal Investigator must be Pitt faculty, and faculty email is the faculty's pitt email. The faculty member is notified via email.

2. To access Partek flow, submit a CRC help ticket to request partek flow account. Use the following template.

3. If your computer is not connected to the Pitt network (e.g. you are working from home or on a trip, or you are using Pitt wireless network), or you are working from a laptop that is connected to the UPMC network, make sure you use Pitt SSLVPN, so that you can communicate with the Center for Research Computing (CRC) cluster (Partek flow is using HTC cluster). Make sure that "Server URL" (4) is sremote.pitt.edu, and "Please select a Role" (14) is Firewall-SAM-USERS-Pulse. Note that there are many different VPN roles. Only Firewall-SAM-USERS-Pulse role can connect to CRC clusters. If your VPN is installed by system administrators and you are not sure what role is used, open Pulse Secure, and click + sign and follow the instructions.

4. The Server host is http://partek.crc.pitt.edu. Fill in your Pitt username and password. Please note that username is case sensitive and all letters are in lowercase. Refer to the image below for an example of how the settings in this box should look:

5. Running an analysis operates in highlighting the data (circles) and choosing the tool from right panel and filling in the parameters. The following image shows an example.

6. Once you start a job, it will be running on HTC cluster. You can check the status of your jobs by clicking Queue.

7. If your jobs are not running with the warning “This task cannot run with the current system configuration. Partek flow requires access to *** GB of RAM in order to run this task.”. This warning is misleading and it is NOT an error. If you are transferring data from your local computer, partek flow is waiting the data transfer. Partek flow jobs will be submitted to the HTC cluster. If the cluster is heavily used, partek flow jobs are waiting in the queue. You can logon the HTC cluster and check partek flow jobs.

8.Users are assigned default disk quota of 1 TB. Partek flow data are assigned on /zfs1. Note that this /zfs1 is not backed up, so you will need to be diligent and back up your own personal data.

9. If you have any problems with this procedure, please submit a CRC support ticket online (login required)