Laptop, NAS, Blade, And Euler | IDEAL IT Passport

Goal: choose the correct system before installing software or copying data.

Prerequisites: ask your supervisor where the project's source data and final deliverables belong.

Execution context: reading and decision exercise. No commands are required.

Decision Table#

System	Use it for	Do not use it for
Your laptop	Editing, small tests, meetings, local development	Sole copy of important research data
GitHub	Source code, configuration, tests, small documentation	Secrets, large datasets, checkpoints, generated results
IDEAL Lab NAS	Shared project data and durable team deliverables	Running high-I/O Euler jobs directly against NAS
Blade Windows server	GUI access to licensed Windows engineering software and short prototypes	Primary long-running ML compute or permanent files on `C:`/`D:`
Euler `$HOME`	Small private code/configuration and environments	Large datasets, checkpoints, or high-I/O workloads
Euler `/cluster/work/fuge`	Large shared working data and artifacts	Files that should be source-controlled in personal clones
Euler `$SCRATCH`	Temporary large data that can be recreated	Only copy of important data; files are purged
Euler `$TMPDIR`	Fast node-local temporary job data	Anything needed after the job exits unless copied back

Compute Decision#

Use your laptop for editing and small smoke tests.
Use Blade when you need its licensed Windows GUI software.
Use Euler CPU nodes for long, parallel, memory-intensive, or unattended computation.
Use Euler GPU nodes only when the program actually executes GPU operations.
Use sbatch for unattended Euler work and euler-tunnel for short interactive development on an allocated compute node.
For ParaView, run the matching 6.0.0 GUI locally and connect it to a CPU pvserver allocation by following the ParaView client/server procedure.

Verification#

Before starting a project, complete this table with your supervisor:

Source code:
Source data:
Working data:
Temporary data:
Checkpoints:
Final results:
Long-term archive:

Common Failure And Safe Recovery#

A large dataset is already in Git or $HOME. Stop adding copies. Ask the repository/data owner where it belongs, move it using an appropriate transfer method, verify the destination, then remove the unwanted copy safely. If it entered Git history, coordinate cleanup rather than rewriting shared history alone.

Ask For Help When#

the project has no declared storage owner;
data is confidential or contract-restricted;
you need to transfer terabytes;
collaborators cannot read or write the approved shared folder;
the only available copy is in temporary storage.

Continue with Incidents And Getting Help.