4.2 Available software

Quebracho currently has R Studio Server and JupyterLab installed. We currently have R Studio installed on sequoia. GRIT manages these installations for us. They will also manage updates for these.

If we wish to install additional software, we will need to decide on these as a group and have GRIT install them for us. When considering new software to install, we should consider whether or not it is already available on other campus servers; what it will cost; and how many people in emLab would use it. Generally speaking, if a specific piece of software is expensive (e.g., Stata or Matlab), will not be used by too many emLab folks, and is already available on other campus servers, we should rely on these other campus servers and not install it on our own servers. Users interested in MatLab should first try Pod which has the necessary licenses and is available for free.

Sequoia will not have a python interface by default. If there is enough interest, JupyterLab may be installed by making a request to GRIT. If users wish to use python it is recommended that they install Visual Studio Code (VS Code) available for free from Microsoft. With VS Code installed, users can add the Remote SSH extension and access sequoia via SSH tunnel. Further instructions can be found in the VS Code Documentation. After accessing sequoia via SSH tunnel, users may install their preferred python distribution. Miniconda is a good starting point, though other options are available. This Medium article is a good place for further installation guidance. Finally, it is recommended to create custom python environments for each project. 

For users that need Stata, it is already available on both UCSB’s Knot cluster. More details for using Stata on Knot can be found here. We will not be installing Stata on quebracho or sequoia.

For users of Matlab, it is already available on all campus clusters. More details can be found hehttps://csc.cnsi.ucsb.edu/docs/using-matlabre. We will not be installing Matlab on quebracho or sequoia.