UBC ARC Workshop - Virtual Environments in HPC April 11 & 12, 2023

UBC Advanced Research Computing (ARC) will be hosting a beginner-friendly 2-part course on virtual environments in high performance computing (HPC):

• Part I: Virtualenv April 11, 2023 1:00-2:00pm. This part will focus on virtualenv on both UBC ARC Sockeye and The Digital Research Alliance of Canada clusters.
• Part II: Conda April 12, 2023 1:00-2:00pm. This part will focus on using Conda to manage the virtual environment on UBC ARC Sockeye.

Virtual environments are tools that offer researchers the ability to create separate, isolated software environments in a system, to install software with its own dependencies. Virtual environments are useful on HPC systems when specific software or software packages are needed, and not readily available as a pre-installed module.

We also recommend all users read our Technical User Documentation for a general review of UBC ARC Sockeye and for information on specific aspects of our system.

These Virtual Environment workshops have concluded and video recordings are now available on UBC ARC’s YouTube channel.

If you have any questions, please contact us at arc.support@ubc.ca.

Highlights:

• Introduction to virtual environments
• How to deploy and run a virtual environment on UBC ARC Sockeye
• How to deploy and run a virtual environment on Alliance systems
• How to install desired tools or packages
• How to troubleshoot common issues when working with virtual environments

Who Should Attend?

UBC faculty, staff, and students who are currently using high performance computing (HPC) systems such as UBC ARC Sockeye and Alliance (formerly Compute Canada) systems.

Prerequisites:

• Basic knowledge of the Linux Command line system
• Basic knowledge of HPC file systems (preferred, but not essential)