2026-01-22

Upcoming free ACENET training

The following online training sessions may be of interest to faculty and students, and are free of charge. Registration is through our training portal — https://www.acenet.training/courses 

Introduction to ACENET and High Performance Computing (HPC), 20 January, 1000-1130hrs Atlantic / 1030-1200hrs NL (online)

What is High Performance Computing (HPC) and what can it do for me? How can ACENET help? Used by researchers across many disciplines to tackle analyses too large or complex for a desktop, or to achieve improved efficiency over a desktop, this session takes participants through the preliminary stages of learning about high performance computing (HPC) and computing clusters, and how to get started with this type of computing. It then reviews software packages available for applications, data analysis, software development and compiling code. Finally, participants will be introduced to the concept of parallel computing to achieve much faster results in analysis. This session is designed for those with no prior experience in HPC, and are looking for an introduction and overview.  

 Introduction to the Linux Command Line, 21 January, 1000-1130hrs Atlantic / 1030-1200hrs NL (online)

Linux is the terminal interface used to enable you to use the ACENET and the Digital Research Alliance of Canada (DRAC) HPC clusters from your desktop. It's the tool you need to get your data on the clusters, run your programs, and get your data back. In this session, learn how to get started with Linux, how to create and navigate directories for your data, load files, manage your storage, run programs on the computing clusters, and set file permissions. This workshop is designed for those with no prior experience in working with a terminal interface.

 Introduction to Shell Scripting, 22 January, 1000-1130hrs Atlantic / 1030-1200hrs NL (online)

Shell scripting helps you save time, automate file management tasks, and better use the power of Linux. This session teaches you how to name, locate and set permissions for executable files, taking input and producing output. You will learn about job scripts, shell variables and looping commands. This workshop is designed for either new High Performance Computing (HPC) users who are familiar with working in a Linux environment, or for experienced users seeking to get more out of shell scripting.  

 Job Scheduling with Slurm, 23 January, 1000-1130hrs Atlantic / 1030-1200hrs NL (online)

The national systems use a job scheduler called “Slurm”. In this session you will learn how Slurm works and how it allocates jobs, helping you to: minimize wait time by framing reasonable requests; ask for only the resources you need to improve efficiency; increase throughput; run more jobs simultaneously; and troubleshoot and address crashes. This workshop is designed for new HPC users familiar with Linux and Shell Scripting, or for experienced users transitioning to Slurm or seeking to improve efficiency with the scheduler.  

 Using Spreadsheets to Organize Data, 28 January, 1300-1600hrs Atlantic | 1330-1630hrs NL

Good data organization is the foundation of any research project. Most researchers have data in spreadsheets, so it’s the starting place for many research projects. To use tools that make computation and analysis more efficient, such as programming languages like R or Python, we need to structure our data the way that computers need the data. This workshop aims to teach researchers basic concepts, skills, and tools for working with data to get more done quickly and with less pain. In this lesson, you will learn good data entry practices, how to avoid common formatting mistakes, approaches for handling dates in spreadsheets, basic quality control and data manipulation, and exporting data from spreadsheets.