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Getting started at CARC

The UNM Center for Advanced Research Computing provides high-performance computing resources to facilitate UNM research — free of charge to faculty, staff, and student researchers, with support from the UNM Office of the Vice President for Research.

Access is organized around CARC accounts (people) and CARC projects (resources). Every user needs an active account, and that account must belong to a project that holds the compute and storage resources you want to use.

Good Neighbor Use Policy

By creating a CARC account you agree to abide by the Good Neighbor Use Policy. Please read it first.

1. Create your account

If you have a UNM email address, use the self-service account portal:

Request an account

If you do not have a UNM email address, ask your UNM project PI to request an account for you:

Collaborator account request form

2. Join a CARC project

Resources (compute time, storage) are attached to projects, managed through ColdFront at coldfront.alliance.unm.edu.

Ask the project's Principal Investigator — typically your research advisor or UNM collaborator — to add your account to their project. Once you are on a project, you can use every resource allocated to it.

For Principal Investigators

  1. Create a project in ColdFront. PI eligibility follows the UNM criteria for Principal Investigator status.
  2. Request resources (compute and storage allocations) for the project through ColdFront.
  3. Add accounts — the PI is responsible for adding collaborators' and students' accounts to the project.

For walkthroughs of project management and the annual review process, see the video tutorials.

Data access and stewardship

CARC follows the data stewardship policies defined by the University for data ownership and succession for all data stored on CARC systems. Review the restrictions on regulated data (HIPAA, PHI, PCI, FERPA, CUI) in the Good Neighbor Use Policy.

Next steps

Video walkthroughs

Creating an Account — from the CARC video tutorials:

CARC Project Management with ColdFront — for PIs and project managers:

More episodes — including the Annual Project Review walkthrough — are on the video tutorials page.

Questions?

Submit a help request to help@carc.unm.edu, open a ticket at support.alliance.unm.edu, or visit office and consultation hours.