IT Resources | Earth Research Institute

ERI IT strives to be a "can do" shop; we are here for our researchers. The following IT resources are available to ERI participants. Anything you can't find here? Have questions for ERI IT? Please submit a help ticket and we'll get right back to you.

Software

ERI provides software utilized by multiple research groups, such as:

Matlab www.software.ucsb.edu/matlab
IDL/ENVI
ArcGIS
Various open source packages

Printing

The printers below are available from systems connected via the ERI Wireless network, but are not "discoverable". If you want to be able to print from the network, you will need to configure the printer on your system.

Black and White Laser Printing

Printer Name: hedwig - (hedwig.eri.ucsb.edu is full name, but short name should validate)
Type: HP LaserJet M604
Location: Mail Area, across from the elevators, right next to main conference room
Print Driver: HP Laserjet 604

This printer can also print PDF documents from a Thumb drive via the USB port at the front of the system.

Insert thumb/flash drive into slot
Use front panel buttons to locate the PDF file to print
Click the select button in the middle

Printer Name: reconsider - (reconsider.eri.ucsb.edu is full name, but short name should validate)
Type: HP LaserJet M601DN
Location: Girvetz Hall
Print Driver: HP Laserjet 601 series

This printer can also print PDF documents from a Thumb drive via the USB port at the front of the system

Insert thumb/flash drive into slot
Use front panel buttons to locate the PDF file to print
Click the select button in the middle

Color Laser Printing

Printer Name: rainbow - (rainbow.eri.ucsb.edu is full name, but short name should validate)
Type: HP Color LaserJet M750
Location: Ellison 6722 (Down the hall just past the bathrooms)
Print Driver: HP Laserjet M750

This printer can also print PDF documents from a Thumb drive via the USB port at the front of the system

Insert thumb/flash drive into slot
Use front panel buttons to locate the PDF file to print
Click the select button in the middle

Poster Printing

Poster printing gets very busy at certain times of the year (AGU, etc.) and scheduling can be crucial in being able to use the campus low cost services. Pro tip: finish your poster early!

Earth Science has an HP Designjet z5200 in Webb Hall 1015. USB printing at $2 per foot, prints to 42" wide semi gloss HP paper or standard white paper. Email proposals@ (suffix with eri.ucsb.edu) for a recharge code. For scheduling poster printing, contact Peter Green, pfgreen@ (suffix with geol.ucsb.edu).

Poster printing is also available at ITST: www.itst.ucsb.edu/computing.html

Another option, not on campus, but worth checking out if you would like to avoid traveling with a poster tube, is to have your poster printed on fabric: fabricposterprinting

Configuring either of the above printers on a Mac is relatively straight forward:

System Preferences
Printers and Scanners
Add Printer (+)
Choose IP
Address: Printer Name for one of the printers above.
Protocol: IPP or HP JetDirect
Use: Select Software
Select the Print Driver for the corresponding printer above

HPC/CPU Crunching

Three "Fat Node" linux systems are available to all ERI researchers. They are Symetrical Multi-Processor/Shared Memory Communication (SMP/SMC) systems configured with job queueing software. Each system has a queuing system, access to scientific computing software and more than 1.5PB of NFS networked storage on the various disk servers at ERI.

Hammer-48 2.1GHz AMD CPU cores, 128GB of RAM, and 7TB of local scratch disk
Tong - 32 2.2GHz Intel CPU cores, 256GB of RAM and 8TB of local scratch disk
Anvil - 32 2.3GHz Intel CPU cores, 512GB of RAM and just over 11TB of local scratch disk
Forge - 28 x 2.6Ghz Intel CPU cores, 512G of RAM and 7T local SSD scratch storage

ERI IT staff is available to assist users in gaining access to these and other larger on and off campus computing resources, including supercomputing resources available via campus ETS. For an overview of how to use this supercomputing resource: http://www.ets.ucsb.edu/sites/www.ets.ucsb.edu/files/compute_resources.pdf

ETS has a full time HPC person of expertise, Burak Himmetoglu. For a general summary of the ETS supercomputing resource and the ETS SuperComputing contact info: http://www.ets.ucsb.edu/services/supercomputing

Remote Services

ERI tries to strike a functional balance between security and availability of resources. The services listed below have at least one form of access control to prevent exposure to external connections. Most of the services below are available to remote systems that connect using the UCSB VPN service .

ssh.eri.ucsb.edu - ssh service available from any location, but only to registered users.
sftp.eri.ucsb.edu - sftp service available from any location, but only to registered users.
smb.eri.ucsb.edu
FreeNX
FastX
VNC
RDC

Storage

ERI provides users with a variety of storage options.

Storage Services: $120/TB per year, billed quarterly per GB, as used.
Build your own (ERI-IT manages your storage server hardware/systems)

Desktop Backups

Desktop backups are available using the BackupPC software to systems that have a known IP address. Features include:

Data de-duplication - multiple copies of the same data are stored only once
Compression - data is stored compressed
Server initiated polling
Simple and intuitive user driven restores via a web driven GUI (easily do your own restores)

Web Services

ERI supports a variety of websites based on a number of technologies:

Static - Standard HTML/CSS websites with non dynamic content.
SSI - Standard HTML/CSS with the addition of server side includes
PHP - The popular general purpose scripting language especially suited to web development.
CMS - Content Management Systems
- Drupal
- MediaWiki
- Wordpress
ERI provides anonymous ftp/ftp-in services
UCSB provides Box http://ucsb.app.box.com unlimited storage with a robust set of features

Users have the ability to update their profile on the departmental drupal website. If they have web service needs that exceed the scope of that profile, there are several options, depending on their needs:

Unix home directory provides a basic web services location
Provide DNS pointers and/or redirects to an externally hosted website
Hosting a site locally on ERI servers

General IT Support

ERI IT staff are available for general IT support on a recharge basis to ERI participants:

Networking/Connectivity
Programming
Desktop Support
VM systems/servers (Linux, Windows)
Database servers
DNS services
System/server hosting for research owned hardware

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ERI provides users with a variety of storage options.

Desktop backups are available using the BackupPC software to systems that have a known IP address. Features include: