Quest High-Performance Computing Cluster
Quest is Northwestern’s high-performance computing cluster. It is housed in the University Data Center. Quest supports a variety of computational workflows to align with the varied needs of researchers in different domains.
Quest has a General Parallel File System (GPFS) backed by a 12 PB capacity IBM Elastic Storage Server (ESS) system to store research data. It also includes a flash-tier scratch space for temporary data storage, and each user has an 80 GB home directory for storing code files and applications.
Please note that Quest is not approved for use with sensitive or restricted data; refer to the Quest Data Security Guidance for details.
Additional details about Quest’s architecture can be found in the Quest technical specifications.
Please include the Acknowledgment of Use when publishing research done using Quest.
Getting Access to Quest
University-Supported General Access
Northwestern provides dedicated resources on Quest for use by the entire Northwestern research community at no cost to researchers. Approximately half of Quest’s CPU and most Quest’s GPU nodes are reserved for General Access. Short-running jobs under 4 hours from General Access users can also utilize open capacity on reserved resources. Quest General Access users can also use the Quest Analytics Nodes and Quest OnDemand for interactive work.
Access to Quest is provisioned in the form of allocations. Allocations consist of a set amount of storage capacity and a priority level for utilizing batch computing resources. Resources on Quest are managed through a fair share mechanism that balances access to General Access resources when demand exceeds availability. Allocations are valid for one year and can be renewed. Allocations can be shared with other Northwestern researchers who need access to the same files.
Group-Supported Resources
Specialized or dedicated resources are available to research centers, departments, or schools who have purchased resources on Quest to support their members.
Dedicated or Priority Access Resources
Researchers or research groups requiring more computational resources or storage than what is available through General Access allocations can purchase additional resources on Quest. Both storage and nodes are purchased for a five-year period.
Storage
Researchers with any allocation type can purchase additional terabytes of Quest storage. Storage purchases are for a five-year period. Quest storage is not backed up, and files that are deleted cannot be recovered. Large storage purchases are subject to availability. Quest storage is only available to researchers requiring compute resources on Quest.
Computational Resources
Priority Access, previously known as full access or “buy-in,” is available through purchase and comprises about half of Quest’s compute nodes. Purchasing dedicated resources on Quest has many advantages over running stand-alone systems. The nodes are administered by the Northwestern IT team, including system updates, patches, account management, and troubleshooting. The cost of supporting infrastructure for the node, such as networking, cooling, and basic storage, is covered by the University.
Standard compute nodes, high-memory nodes, and GPU nodes are all available for purchase. Full node details are available in Purchasing Resources on Quest. Contact quest-help@northwestern.edu with any questions.
Getting Started with Quest
After setting up or getting access to a Quest allocation, there are tutorials, videos, consultations, and workshops to help you get started using Quest.