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The Interactive Data Analytics Service (IDAS) currently provides support for research and class use at the University of Iowa (UI).

Request an IDAS Account for Research Use

IDAS individual accounts are available to UI faculty, staff, and students who plan to use IDAS for their research projects. Examples of possible use cases include research projects in research laboratories, undergraduate research theses, and graduate research dissertations.

If you are a student at the UI: 

• Your account must be sponsored by a current UI faculty or staff member. In the Workflow form, please list the faculty or staff member with whom you are working in the “Sponsor” field.

• Please do NOT list yourself as your own sponsor.  

• After you submit the Workflow form, it will route to your sponsor to approve first. After that, the request will route to ITS Research Services staff to process. Our team typically approves account requests within 48 hours of receiving them. You will receive an automated email notifying you that your account is ready.

• Our team will not receive your request unless your sponsor has approved it first. Please communicate with your sponsor about your IDAS account request, especially if you need the request to be approved within a certain time frame.

If you are a current faculty or staff member at the UI, you may sponsor an IDAS research account for a researcher who is not a current member of the UI, provided that certain criteria are met. For more information, please see Guest Accounts for External Collaborators - IDAS.

The following resources are available to an individual IDAS research user. Every time a user starts a session in IDAS, they can view requestable resources in the “Server Options” form.

• CPU: requestable, 2 to 32 cores

• Memory (RAM): requestable, 8 to 512 GiB

• GPU: requestable, 1 GPU

• Programming tool:

  • Python, R, or Julia

  • RStudio or JupyterLab

  • Several versions of CUDA are requestable.

• By default, each IDAS research user gets up to 100 GB for storage in their home directory. The user can use their IDAS home directory to store datasets, scripts, and other files. For more information, please see File Storage in IDAS.

• Users can choose to connect to their Argon home directory, their LSS share(s), and/or their IHDR data enclave share in their IDAS session.
  
  

Request to use IDAS for Teaching a Course

A course instructor at the UI may request an IDAS instance and accounts for their course.

If you are a student at the UI and would like to use IDAS for a course, we suggest that you discuss your computational needs with your course instructor, so that your course instructor can fill out the Workflow form below to request IDAS for the course.

• Please note the following about student access:

  • Students enrolled in the course will automatically be given access to an IDAS instance created specifically for that course. Instructors need not submit a list of students.

  • Access to the course instance will be automatically adjusted for students who add or drop the course after the semester has started. 

  • Students do not need to request individual IDAS research accounts unless they want access to the IDAS research instance to work on their own research.

• If a course has multiple sections taught by different instructors, each instructor will need to fill out a separate Workflow form to request IDAS for the section(s) that they teach.

• Access to the IDAS course instance lasts for the duration of the semester. At the end of each semester, we routinely deprovision (remove) old course instances in order to prepare resources for a new semester. Please download any data, codes, and files from your IDAS class account to your computer before your course instance is deprovisioned. For more information, please see Class Accounts at the End of the Semester.

The following resources are available to a course. Instructors can view and request these resources when they fill out the Workflow form above to request IDAS for their course.

• CPU: requestable, 1 to 8 cores

• Memory (RAM): requestable, 1 to 32 GB

• Programming tool:

  • Python, R, or Julia

  • RStudio or JupyterLab

• Storage space for each student: requestable, 10 to 100 GB per student

• Shared storage space that all students can access:

  • 1 TB per course, at no charge

  • >1 TB is available for a fee. ITS Research Services staff will contact the course instructor to discuss options.

Request to use IDAS for a Workshop or Hackathon

A workshop instructor at the UI may request an IDAS instance and accounts for their workshop.

If you are a workshop attendee at the UI and would like to use IDAS for a workshop, please discuss your computational needs with your workshop instructor, so that your workshop instructor can fill out the Workflow form below to request IDAS for the workshop.

• Workshop and hackathon participants do not need to request individual IDAS research accounts unless they want access to the IDAS research instance to work on their own research.

• For more information about using IDAS for workshops, please see Requesting IDAS for Workshops.

The following resources are available to a workshop. Instructors can view and request these resources when they fill out the Workflow form above to request IDAS for their workshop.

• CPU: requestable, 1 to 8 cores

• Memory (RAM): requestable, 1 to 32 GB

• Programming tool:

  • Python, R, or Julia

  • RStudio or JupyterLab

• Storage space for each student: requestable, 10 to 100 GB per student

• Shared storage space that all students can access:

  • 1 TB per workshop, at no charge

  • >1 TB is available for a fee. ITS Research Services staff will contact the workshop instructor to discuss options.

Contact

If you have any questions or comments, please contact research-computing@uiowa.edu.