Research Computing and Data

Update: 2026-06-29 9:45PM

The datacenter cooling issue has been resolved. The running job limit has been set back to normal and queue times will start to improve.

We are currently experiencing a chiller outage at Clemson’s datacenter. To help reduce the cooling load and maintain system stability, we have temporarily limited the number of jobs that can run concurrently on the cluster.

As a result, queue wait times will be longer than usual until the issue is resolved.

We apologize for the inconvenience and appreciate your patience while we work through this situation. We will provide updates here as they become available.

The Research Computing and Data (RCD) team is pleased to announce a significant increase in the scratch storage quota on Palmetto 2.

Effective immediately, the default scratch storage allocation has been increased from 5 TiB and 5 million files to 10 TiB and 10 million files per user.

Purge Policy Remains in Effect

This quota increase does not change Palmetto 2’s existing scratch space purge policy. The /scratch filesystem remains a temporary workspace intended for active research and computation, and files that meet the purge criteria remain subject to removal.

Users are responsible for understanding and complying with the scratch purge policy. Attempts to circumvent the policy—including actions intended solely to prevent files from being identified as inactive or eligible for purge—are prohibited. RCD reserves the right to remove data associated with such activity without prior notice in order to maintain the health, performance, and fairness of the shared filesystem.

Researchers should ensure that important data is stored in appropriate long-term storage locations and should not rely on /scratch for archival or permanent storage.

Why the Change?

As research workflows continue to grow in scale and complexity, many users are working with increasingly large datasets, simulation outputs, machine learning training data, and high-throughput analysis pipelines. Based on user feedback and observed usage patterns, RCD has expanded scratch storage capacity to better support these evolving computational needs.

The updated limits provide:

• 2× more scratch storage capacity (10 TiB)
• 2× higher file count allowance (10 million files)
• Greater flexibility for data-intensive workflows
• Reduced need for users to actively manage scratch space during large projects

About Scratch Storage

The /scratch filesystem on Palmetto 2 is designed for temporary, high-performance storage during active computational work. Users should continue to treat scratch space as temporary storage and maintain copies of important data in appropriate long-term storage locations.

While the per-user quota has been increased, users should be aware that scratch storage is a shared resource with finite capacity. The new quota represents the maximum amount of storage and number of files a user may consume, but it does not guarantee that every user can simultaneously utilize their full allocation. Responsible use of scratch space helps ensure that the filesystem remains performant and available for the entire Palmetto community.

Users can monitor their current scratch usage and quota limits at any time using the checkquota command. Additional information about scratch storage, quotas, and purge policies is available in the Palmetto documentation.

As a reminder:

• Scratch storage is intended for active jobs and working datasets.
• Critical research data should be backed up elsewhere.
• Users are encouraged to periodically remove unneeded files and directories.

During today’s ReDCAT lunch event, Dr. Carl Ehrett shared updates on several new AI capabilities now available through Clemson Research Computing and Data (RCD), including the RCD LLM Service, Codex on Palmetto, and the Palmetto HPC Helper.

Highlights from the presentation included:

• Using the RCD LLM Service API endpoints with research workflows via Jupyter Notebooks
• Chatting with Clemson-hosted AI models through OpenWebUI
• Connecting Clemson-hosted models to coding assistants such as Codex and Claude Code
• Discussion of research reproducibility and long-term access to open-weight AI models
• Demonstration of the Palmetto HPC Helper, a custom GPT grounded in Palmetto documentation

A recording of this presentation is available below.

If the video player does not appear, use this direct link to the recording instead.

To learn more about these services, please see documentation for the RCD LLM Service and Codex on Palmetto. If you have questions, feel free to contact the RCD team.

We’d like to announce the pilot of our new RCD LLM Service. This service provides no-cost API access to leading open-weight models to all Clemson users.

The service provides access through common API formats including:

• OpenAI Compatible Chat Completions
• OpenAI Compatible Embedding
• OpenAI Compatible Responses
• Anthropic Compatible Messages

These APIs are widely supported by many AI tools and libraries, including coding assistants such as OpenAI Codex, Claude Code, and OpenCode; chat and RAG interfaces such as OpenWebUI and AnythingLLM; and software libraries such as Pydantic AI, LangChain, and OpenAI SDKs.

There are no set rate limits or token quotas. Instead the API has a fair-share scheduling mechanism built in so that if the underlying hardware becomes saturated, requests are held before sending to the underlying engine with priority based on recent usage.

Check out our documentation for details. To get started, you will need to request an allocation in a process similar to Palmetto, then you can register API keys.

As documented in our Acceptable Use Guidelines, any use of the service must remain consistent with Clemson University IT policies, Clemson AI guidance, and any sponsor, contract, or regulatory requirements that apply to your work. Non-academic personal and commercial use is prohibited.

We are excited to announce that the Spring 2026 maintenance work was completed successfully.

All RCD services have been restored and are ready for users to access.

The RCD completed the following tasks:

• Critical updates to network and storage infrastructure were completed.
  • These updates have improved performance and stability for all users of the cluster
• Critical Kernel updates to address CVE-2026-3141 (Copy Fail)
• Mitigations to address CVE-2026-43284 and CVE-2026-43500 (Dirty Frag)
• Nvidia driver upgraded to 580 branch (CUDA 13 support)
  • cuda/13.0.2 module added
• Slurm was upgraded to 25.11.5
• Open OnDemand was upgraded to 4.1.5
• GitLab was updated to v18.11.2

We appreciate your patience during the maintenance period and hope that these changes will improve the user experience.

If you have any questions or have encountered post-maintenance issues, please let us know by submitting a support ticket.