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May 22, 2024
Update the Server Options form in the Research instance. The form will auto-populate information from your last IDAS session.
General updates and bug fixes
March 23, 2024
Added new GPUs: 8 NVIDIA A30 and 12 NVIDIA L4
Added 5 new-generation compute nodes with faster CPU. Each node has 128 CPU threads and 1.5TB RAM.
December 27-29, 2023
Migration of home directories of IDAS research users. Users will not notice any difference in using their IDAS home directories. The new storage system will give more consistent performance, free up compute resources for users, and streamline future maintenance. For more details, please
seesee this article.
General updates and bug fixes
November 1, 2023
Transitioned to a new authentication service to reduce authentication-related issues for users
Updated IDAS URL to https://idas.uiowa.edu/ for consistent branding. Research users will be automatically redirected to this new URL when they log in from the previous URL. No changes will be made to class instances until after the end of the Fall 2023 semester
Optimized the wording on the Server Options form for research users
General updates and bug fixes
August 9-11, 2023
Added Python 3.11, R 4.3.1, and Julia 1.9.2
Updated JupyterHub to version 4
Fixed bugs with how the LSS paths in the Server Options form are handled
Prepared IDAS for additional storage for new home directories
General bug fixes and security patches
Python 3.7 reached its end of life on June 27, 2023. Since Python 3.7 is no longer being maintained by the official Python project, our team will cease to support and maintain the Python 3.7 instances in IDAS.
May 17, 2023
Updated IDAS nodes
Config updates
Updated NVIDIA drivers
Preparations for new IDAS home drive systems
December 28-30, 2022
R 4.2.2, Python 3.10, and Julia 1.8.3 are now available.
Users will be able to create, open, and edit CSV files in IDAS. For more information, please see Editing CSV Files on IDAS.
The default interface on IDAS has changed from Jupyter Notebook to JupyterLab. This change only affects the default interface at log in. Both Jupyter Notebook and JupyterLab will still be available on IDAS, and users can easily switch between Jupyter Notebook and JupyterLab. For more information, please see Jupyter Notebook and JupyterLab.
November 2, 2022
Security patches
General updates and bug fixes
August 10, 2022
Security patches
General updates and bug fixes
May 18, 2022
Added new GPUs: 4 NVIDIA A10 and 4 NVIDIA A30
Added 2 new-generation compute nodes with faster CPU. Each node has 128 CPU threads and 1TB RAM.
Upgraded Jupyter Hub to version 2.2.2
Better logging so that Research Services staff can better troubleshoot support requests.
We can now add new language version and instance type to IDAS without service downtime.
February 9, 2022
Julia 1.7.1 is now available
IDAS was prepared for future expansion
General updates and bug fixes
December 27-30, 2021
IDAS infrastructure has been migrated to new hardware, which will improve service stability.
Linux system software has been updated to current versions.
August 11 - August 12, 2021
R 4.1 is now available
Julia 1.6 is now available
Increased maximum RAM that can be requested to 512GB
January 6 - January 7, 2021
Security updates
Better error handling in the Server Options form
Python 3.9 made available
Jupyterhub updated to 1.3.0
Jupyterlab updated to 2.2.9
Jupyter Notebooks updated to 6.1.6
August 12 - August 13, 2020
Python 3.7 and 3.8 are now available. Python 3.6 will remain an option.
R 4.0.2 is now available. R 3.6.1 will remain an option.
Julia 1.3.1, 1.4.2 and 1.5.0 are now available. Julia 1.2.0 will remain an option.
4 additional GPUs have been added.
June 26, 2020
Resolve an issue that prevents users from connecting to dedicated LSS shares
Users can now spawn an instance with RStudio directly.
Please select the RStudio option in the "Server Options" form:
Users no longer need to source .bashrc every time they work with conda
April 1, 2020
Instance memory limit will be raised to 256GB
Julia users no longer need to specify depot paths
You can now specify sub-directories of LSS shares when spawning an instance
General updates and bug fixes
March 17, 2020
RStudio Classroom has been moved to a multi-server environment. Sessions are now evenly distributed across all the nodes resulting in less resource contention.
We have also doubled the amount of compute resources available to RStudio Classroom.
December 26, 2019
New features deployed on this date include:
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A sneak peak of our new Spawner form is below.
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Please note that Python, R, and Julia will each have its own container image. For example, to start a Julia instance, please select one of the three options for Julia under IDAS Image in the Spawner form. 
2. LSS and Argon Home access
Users will be able to access their Large Scale Storage (LSS) and Argon homes from IDAS.
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More information about Large Scale Storage can be found at https://its.uiowa.edu/lss
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RStudio will be available for research with this update. To start an RStudio instance, please select one of the three options for R under IDAS Image in the Spawner form.
Doing so will launch an R instance. In order to launch RStudio, click New, then select the RStudio option.
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This will launch an RStudio session, which looks very similar to the local version of RStudio.
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Contact
Please contact Giang Rudderham and Cody B Johnson at contact research-computing@uiowa.edu with any questions or concerns.