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Research Computing Services

Digital Research Alliance of Canada

Many services we offer are through the Digital Research Alliance of Canada. You access your Alliance resources through the Compute Canada Database (CCDB) web portal. The CCDB is your single access source for all Alliance resources. Through the portal you can: 

  • Manage your personal information and user roles.
  • Track your compute resources and projects.
  • Apply for additional services and resource allocation.

The Alliance is still rebranding their tools and services, so you may still see things labelled with Compute Canada.

Alliance accounts

Alliance accounts give you access to resources like HPC clusters, the CCDB portal, and Nextcloud. You must renew your account annually to keep it active, but you can reactivate a dormant account at any time.

Keep your account active

If you’re an Academic Principal Investigator who has sponsored other users, make sure to keep your account active. If your account becomes inactive, it will deactivate all the users you’ve sponsored as well.

Have you used Compute Canada resources in the past? You can renew your account!

For more information about account renewals, see the Alliance’s account renewal FAQ.

User roles

The two main user roles relevant for UVic researchers are academic principal investigator and sponsored user.

Academic principal investigators (PIs) include faculty, adjunct faculty, and librarians. PIs can

  • access Alliance resources and services free of charge
  • request resources via the Rapid Access Service (RAS)
  • apply to the Resource Allocation Competitions (RAC)
  • sponsor other users

Find your CCRI information

If you’re sponsoring other users, you'll need to provide your Compute Canada Role Identifier (CCRI) for their applications. A CCRI is your unique ID that signifies your active primary role (example: abc-123-01).

It can be found under the Active role section on the CCDB homepage when you login. Your CCRI may change over time if you have different roles (example: sponsored user becomes an academic principal investigator).

 Sponsored users can access resources assigned to them by their PI. This user role includes

  • undergrad and graduate students
  • post-doctoral fellows
  • external collaborators or visiting scholars
  • research and non-research staff associated with a research group

Creating your Alliance account

The Alliance account creation process has a few different steps depending on your role.

Academic principal investigators

  1. Fill in the account application on the CCDB login portal.
    • Select the BC DRI Group: University of Victoria option from the Institution list
    • We recommend including the optional Proof of Position information to speed up the account approval process
  2. Take note of the username and password you provide on the application form (and save it in your password manager, if you use one). You’ll use it to access all Alliance resources.
  3. Submit the form. You’ll receive an email requesting account confirmation.

Once your application is approved, you’re an Alliance member and you can begin using Alliance resources.  If you'd like more information about account creation, there's a full walkthrough on the Alliance website

Sponsoring other users as an academic principal investigator

All users need to submit their own account application so they can agree to various terms of use. You can help your students and researchers by

  • making sure your own Alliance account is active
  • providing your CCRI information for their application
  • promptly responding to confirmation emails from the Alliance

Sponsored user

Before you start, make sure

  • your sponsor has an active Alliance account
  • you know their Compute Canada Role Identifier (CCRI)—you’ll need it to complete the form

To create your account:

  1. Fill in the account application on the CCDB login portal.
    • Select the BC DRI Group: University of Victoria option from the Institution list
    • Enter your sponsor’s CCRI information
  2. Take note of the username and password you provide on the application form (and save it in your password manager, if you use one). You’ll use it to access all Alliance resources.
  3. Submit the form. Your sponsor will receive an email requesting account confirmation.

Once your application is approved, you’re an Alliance member. You’ll be able to access some Alliance resources right away, but you’ll still need to request access to any specific cloud projects you need.

Account support

If you have any questions or issues creating an account, you can contact the Alliance tech support team. They can also help you recover deactivated accounts or reset passwords.

Email the Alliance account support team

Basic Alliance resources

 All Alliance members can: 

  • access computing clusters to do research using SSH or JupyterHub
    • clusters use scheduling software to allocate processing time to different projects equitably
  • create up to 3 virtual machines (VMs) in a computing cloud and request resources up to a modest limit
  • Use network storage up to a certain quota
    • basic quotas range from 1-10TB, depending on what cluster or cloud you’re using

PIs can also:

  • sponsor users: sponsor any number of colleagues and share data and resources with them
  • request more resources for their projects

Get started with cloud computing

If you intend to create virtual machines (VMs, also called cloud instances) using the Alliance cloud, you’ll need to request a cloud project first. Resources (like virtual CPUs and memory) will be allocated to your project. Then you can create cloud instances that use those resources. 

Create a new cloud project

To request a cloud project, you need to have an active Alliance account and be a PI. You can have up to 3 active cloud projects at a time.

Before you make your request, read the Alliance’s Getting a cloud project guide and Cloud shared security responsibility model.

When you’re ready, fill out the CC cloud project and RAS request form.

The Alliance tech support team will review your request and usually respond within a few business days.

Request access to an existing cloud project

Sponsored users can’t create cloud projects of their own, but a PI can give other Alliance members access to their cloud projects for collaboration. To request access to an existing cloud project you’ll need this info from the project’s PI:

  • the name of the project
  • which cloud it’s hosted on

When you’re ready, fill out the CC cloud project and RAS request form. The PI will be contacted to approve your request.

Request additional resources

 There are two ways to request additional resources for a project: