(This guide was originally written by Darcy Diesburg, PhD)

What is OSCAR?

OSCAR, or the Ocean State Center for Advanced Research supercomputer, is a set of remote Linux computing servers that can be accessed in the cloud. With OSCAR, we store data and can run analyses from any computer that can connect to Brown’s Network.

• Documentation of both what OSCAR is and how to use it can be found here: https://docs.ccv.brown.edu/oscar
• CCV offers workshops and office hours about OSCAR. You can sign up here: https://ccv.brown.edu/

First: create your OSCAR account

First, you need an OSCAR account associated with the Jones lab. If you don’t have this, stop and complete the account access process:

• To request access to OSCAR, go to https://docs.ccv.brown.edu/oscar
  • Click on “CCV new user account”
  • Log in with your Brown credentials
  • Select "exploratory account with PI”
  • Put in Stephanie’s name and email
  • Done! CCV will send an email to Stephanie to confirm that you are part of the lab, and you should be granted access within a week.

If you already have an OSCAR account that is not linked to the Jones lab, email support@ccv.brown.edu and cc Stephanie to be added to the Jones lab condo.

How do I access OSCAR?

Once you have OSCAR access, you can log onto OSCAR!

There are many ways to access it, but I recommend novice cloud computing users use the Open On-Demand (OOD) portal and open a Desktop session, which feels most similar to working on your own desktop, though there are other ways to interact with the server. To do this, go to https://ood.ccv.brown.edu/. You should arrive at a webpage that looks like this:

Select the Desktop button.

On the Desktop page, specify a session type and hit “Launch”. (Any amount of time or computing resources works - since you won’t be doing heavy computational work, I recommend the session that will stay open the longest, even if it has fewer cores or memory.) The session will take a few minutes to allocate resources and launch. Once it does, hit “Launch Desktop”. Another tab will open with a remote Linux desktop. As long as the session is open, you can close and resume the session by returning to the Desktop homepage, but clicking on “My Interactive Sessions”. Once your time limit is reached, the session will end without saving ongoing progress, so make sure to save progress as you go before you close a session tab the day.

How do I move files to OSCAR?

Please do not move data off of OSCAR, as many research projects have confidentiality protocols in place, even for de-identified data, that prevent the storage of data on personal computers. However, you may want to move your personal scripts off of OSCAR or need to put files on OSCAR. To do this, you need a file transfer software such as FileZilla (or whatever you prefer).

Within such a software, use the transfer portal to connect, which has the following information:

Host: transfer.ccv.brown.edu

Username: [your brown username]