Introduction

Palmetto is a supercomputing cluster: a set of powerful computers that are connected to each other. It is built and maintained by Clemson University, and is located off campus, close to Anderson SC, in a dedicated building which is powered by a dedicated power plant.

Fig. 2 A view of Palmetto Cluster

The Palmetto cluster is maintained by two teams: a team of system administrators, who work directly at the cluster, and monitors its hardware and operating system, and a team of research facilitators, who work with the Palmetto users. The two teams work very closely together. As research facilitators, we provide training workshops, online help and support, and in-person office hours (which are currently on Zoom).

We maintain a very extensive website which hosts plenty of information for Palmetto users. We have more than 2000 people using Palmetto; they come from a variety of departments: Computer Science, Chemistry, Biology, Public Health, Engineering, Mathematics, Psychology, Forestry, etc. In addition to Clemson, we have researchers from many other universities using Palmetto.