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Getting Started#

Prerequisites#

To start using Oak, you will need:

  • an active SUNet ID,

    What is a SUNet ID?

    A SUNet ID is a unique 3-8 character account name that identifies you as a member of the Stanford community, with access to the Stanford University Network of computing resources and services. Not to be confused with University ID (a 8-digit number that appears on your Stanford ID Card), your SUNet ID is a permanent and visible part of your Stanford identity and often appears in your Stanford email address (eg. sunetid@stanford.edu).

    SUNet IDs are not managed by Research Computing. For more information, see https://accounts.stanford.edu/

    SUNet ID service levels and external collaborators

    Base-level service is sufficient for Sherlock accounts. External collaborators, or users without a SUNet ID, can be sponsored by a PI a get a sponsored SUNet ID at no cost. Please see the sponsorship page for more information.

  • an Oak account,

  • a SSH client,
  • good understanding of the concepts and terms used throughout our documentation

How to request a new Oak Space#

To request a new storage space, or to increase the quota of an existing space, please see our orders page.

How to access an existing Oak Space#

Access to existing Oak spaces is typically managed by the PI directly or delegated to a lab manager.

This is easily accomplished through an online tool, Stanford Workgroup Manager, where Oak workgroup members can be managed.

Any of the Workgroup administrators can grant access to their Oak space.

Please note that changes made in Workgroup Manager may take several hours to propogate to Oak and Sherlock.

How much does Oak cost?#

Please visit the University IT rates page for the most up-to-date information on the cost of Oak storage.

SSH clients#

Linux #

Linux distributions usually come with a version of the OpenSSH client already installed. So no additional software installation is required. If not, please refer to your distribution's documentation to install it.

MacOS #

MacOS systems usually come with a version of the OpenSSH client already installed. So no additional software installation is required

Windows #

Microsoft Windows doesn't provide any SSH client by default. To install one, you have several options, depending on the version of Windows.

  • WSL recommended

    Windows 10 provides a feature called the "Windows Subsystem for Linux" (WSL). Please refer to the official documentation or this howto for installation instructions. Once installed, you'll be able to use the ssh command from a Windows terminal to connect to an Oak DTN.

  • Cygwin

    The Cygwin project predates WSL and provides similar features, which among other things, allow users to install a command-line SSH client on their Windows machines.

The two options above will ensure the best compatibility with the Oak environment. If you'd like to explore other avenues, many other SSH client implementations are available, but have not necessarily been tested with Sherlock, so your mileage may vary.

Unix/Linux resources#

A full tutorial on using Unix/Linux is beyond the scope of this documentation. However, there are many tutorials for beginning to use Unix/Linux on the web.

A few tutorials we recommend are:

More specifically about HPC and Research Computing: