News on Unity Documentation

Unity Digest 2/25/26

Wed, 25 Feb 2026 15:30:00 -0400

Hi Unity Users! This week’s digest includes important information about Unity and reminders about upcoming events.

Unity Digest 2/9/26

Mon, 09 Feb 2026 11:00:00 -0400

Hi Unity Users! This week’s digest includes updates to nodes and AI dataset directories, a recent milestone, and reminders about upcoming learning opportunities.

Unity Digest 1/27/26

Tue, 27 Jan 2026 14:15:00 -0400

Hi Unity Users! This week’s digest includes important information about running jobs on Unity and some exciting spring semester opportunities.

Spring Workshops from the University of Rhode Island AI Lab

Fri, 16 Jan 2026 11:30:00 -0400

The University of Rhode Island’s Artificial Intelligence (URI AI) Lab invites the Unity community to attend their Spring 2026 workshops. The URI AI Lab is dedicated to interdisciplinary research and learning in the context of use-inspired AI. The Lab runs workshops on common AI tools and offers consultancy for research and educational projects.

Unity Digest 1/8/26

Thu, 08 Jan 2026 14:00:00 -0400

Happy New Year, Unity Users! 🎆 This week’s digest highlights upcoming spring semester events and opportunities.

Unity Digest 12/4/25

Thu, 04 Dec 2025 12:30:00 -0400

Happy December, Unity Users! ⛄ This week’s digest includes two new exciting updates to Unity and a reminder about URI AI Lab’s last Fall workshop.

Unity Digest 11/13/25

Thu, 13 Nov 2025 14:00:00 -0400

Hi Unity Users! Keep reading for a faculty spotlight and upcoming event reminders.

Unity Digest 10/29/25

Wed, 29 Oct 2025 09:30:00 -0400

Hi Unity Users! This week’s digest includes an exciting announcement, a faculty highlight, and upcoming event reminders.

Unity Digest 10/10/25

Fri, 10 Oct 2025 13:30:00 -0400

Hi Unity Users! This week’s digest includes new features and upcoming event reminders.

Unity Digest 9/19/25

Fri, 19 Sep 2025 11:30:00 -0400

Hi Unity Users! This week’s digest brings a mix of reminders, new features, and learning opportunities.

Unity Digest 9/4/25

Thu, 04 Sep 2025 04:00:00 -0400

Hi Unity Users,

Happy first week of the Fall Semester! This week’s digest highlights exciting workshops, events, and plenty of ways to get involved with Unity this semester.

Fall Workshops from the University of Rhode Island AI Lab

Wed, 27 Aug 2025 14:00:00 -0400

The University of Rhode Island’s Artificial Intelligence (URI AI) Lab invites the Unity community to attend their Fall 2025 workshops. The URI AI Lab is dedicated to interdisciplinary research and learning in the context of use-inspired AI. The Lab runs workshops on common AI tools and offers consultancy for research and educational projects.

Unity Digest 8/13/25

Wed, 13 Aug 2025 12:00:00 -0400

Hi Unity Users! This week’s digest is packed with ways to get involved with Unity, including exciting news about our new chatbot prototype, fall onboarding, and our upcoming 5-Year Anniversary Series!

Unity Digest 7/31/25

Thu, 31 Jul 2025 10:00:00 -0400

Hi Unity Users! In this week’s digest, we’re sharing exciting Unity updates, including a new tool now available on the platform, helpful tips for setting up email reminders, and a chance to test out a chatbot prototype. You’ll also find an opportunity to share your work and be featured in our upcoming Unity 5-Year Anniversary Series!

Unity Digest 7/16/25

Wed, 16 Jul 2025 12:00:00 -0400

Hi Unity Users! This digest features some important announcements, useful information, and reminders about upcoming workshops.

Unity Digest 7/2/25

Wed, 02 Jul 2025 12:00:00 -0400

Hi Unity Users! This digest features some important announcements, useful information, and reminders about upcoming workshops.

Unity Digest 6/6/25

Fri, 06 Jun 2025 13:00:00 -0400

Hi Unity Users! This digest features some important announcements and exciting upcoming workshops.

Summer Workshops from the University of Rhode Island AI Lab

Mon, 02 Jun 2025 08:00:00 -0400

The University of Rhode Island’s Artificial Intelligence (URI AI) Lab invites the Unity community to attend their Summer 2025 workshops. The URI AI Lab is dedicated to interdisciplinary research and learning in the context of use-inspired AI. The Lab runs workshops on common AI tools and offers consultancy for research and educational projects.

Unity Digest 5/22/25

Thu, 22 May 2025 12:00:00 -0400

Hi Unity Users! This digest features some important reminders and upcoming events.

Unity Digest 5/9/25

Fri, 09 May 2025 12:00:00 -0400

Hi Unity Users! Keep reading for an update to our documentation and some important announcements about Unity.

Unity Digest 4/25/25

Fri, 25 Apr 2025 10:00:00 -0400

Hi Unity Users! Keep reading for some updates to our documentation and key announcements about Unity.

Unity Digest 4/11/25

Fri, 11 Apr 2025 13:00:00 -0400

Hi Unity Users! Keep reading for a few announcements about Unity! ANNOUNCEMENTS 📢 ⏰Annual shutdown will begin on June 2nd at 9:00PM We are approaching our annual maintenance period, where Unity will be completely offline starting on June 2nd, at 9:00PM, for necessary maintenance and upgrades. We expect to be back online by 9:00AM on June 5th, if not earlier. This coincides with the annual shutdown at the datacenter Unity lives at, the MGHPCC.

UPCOMING EVENTS 3/25 - 4/4

Tue, 25 Mar 2025 15:00:00 -0400

Some exciting upcoming events taking place this week and next week!

Unity Digest 3/14/25

Fri, 14 Mar 2025 13:00:00 -0400

Hi Unity Users! Keep reading for some helpful documentation updates and announcements about Unity.

Unity Digest 2/28/25

Fri, 28 Feb 2025 13:00:00 -0400

Hi Unity Users! Keep reading for some helpful documentation updates and announcements about Unity. UPDATED DOCS ✏️ Software Management was updated to include a section on how to build software from scratch Troubleshooting was updated to include additional information on how to solve SSH connection errors ANNOUNCEMENTS 📢 ⚙️ New hardware alert! Three L40S nodes and one A16 node added to Unity Unity has been upgraded to include three new nodes with 12 Nvidia L40S GPUs, four on each node.

Unity Digest 2/7/25

Fri, 07 Feb 2025 14:00:00 -0400

Hi Unity Users! Keep reading for some exciting announcements about Unity.

Unity Digest 1/24/25

Fri, 24 Jan 2025 11:00:00 -0400

Hi Unity Users! We have some exciting new documentation and upcoming events to announce.

Spring Workshops from the University of Rhode Island AI Lab

Wed, 22 Jan 2025 16:00:00 -0400

The University of Rhode Island’s Artificial Intelligence (URI AI) Lab invites the Unity community to attend their Spring 2025 workshops. The URI AI Lab is dedicated to interdisciplinary research and learning in the context of use-inspired AI. The Lab runs workshops on common AI tools and offers consultancy for research and educational projects.

Unity Digest 1/10/25

Fri, 10 Jan 2025 11:00:00 -0400

Hi Unity Users! We hope you had a wonderful holiday and a happy new year! The Unity Digest is back with some updated documentation and key announcements. UPDATED DOCS ✏️ Updated our documentation on conda environments to reflect the change in module name ANNOUNCEMENTS 📢 💡 Unity profile is now available for Nextflow nf-core pipelines An institutional Unity profile is now available for Nextflow nf-core pipelines (docs, config)! To use it, add the -profile unity option to any nf-core pipeline.

Unity Digest 12/13/24

Fri, 13 Dec 2024 14:00:00 -0400

Hi Unity Users! This week’s digest features new documentation and useful announcements. NEW DOCS 🎉 Git Guide. An introductory quick guide to version control and Git. “Get Help” section: Frequently Asked Questions. Go here to find answers to general, commonly asked questions about Unity. Troubleshooting (new!). Go here to find solutions to common errors and issues encountered by Unity users. ANNOUNCEMENTS 📢 📸 Snapshots for /project In addition to /work and /home, users can now recover files for /projects See more info about snapshots.

Unity Digest 11/21/24

Thu, 21 Nov 2024 17:00:00 -0400

Hi Unity Users! This week’s digest features both new documentation and exciting announcements. NEW DOCS 🎉 New Get Started section, which includes: Common terms (new!) HPC Resources (updated) Quick Start Guide Theory of HPC Overview of threads, cores, and sockets in Slurm for HPC workflows (new!) ANNOUNCEMENTS 📢 🏆 Harmony Awarded Through NSF Grant! The Unity team received an NSF grant to add a new system to the Unity Research Computing Platform, called Harmony.

Unity Digest 11/8/24

Fri, 08 Nov 2024 12:00:00 -0400

Hi Unity Users! This week’s digest features both new documentation and key announcements. NEW Docs 🎉 Quick Start – a quick start guide to our documentation. Helper Scripts – includes commands to help you schedule jobs in Slurm more effectively. UPDATED ✏️ General updates to align our documentation with the current cluster and module versions Updated all documentation to reflect the long partition removal and long QOS addition ANNOUNCEMENTS 📢 ✅ Completed OS upgrade Unity’s operating system (OS) upgrade has been completed.

COMPLETED: Unity Ubuntu 24.04 Update on October 22, 2024

Fri, 25 Oct 2024 15:00:00 -0400

Unity’s operating system (OS) upgrade is NOW COMPLETE! On October 22, 2024, we upgraded all Unity servers from Ubuntu 20.04 to the new LTS (long term support) version, 24.04. This is a critical update to the cluster to ensure continued security and stability. For real-time discussion about changes regarding the OS release, join the #os-upgrade-24-04 channel in our Unity User Community Slack. For more information on joining the Slack, see here.

Unity Digest 10/16/24

Wed, 16 Oct 2024 14:00:00 -0400

Hi Unity Users! This week’s digest includes some important announcements that you won’t want to miss. ANNOUNCEMENTS 📢 🚨 FOURTH REMINDER: Ubuntu 24.04 Update on October 22, 2024 We are less than a week from the upcoming OS update on October 22, 2024. This will be a significant and critical operating system update to Unity. All Unity servers will move from the current operating system, Ubuntu 20.04, to the current LTS version, Ubuntu 24.

Unity Digest 9/26/24

Thu, 26 Sep 2024 12:00:00 -0400

Hi Unity Users! This week’s digest includes additions to the documentation website and key upcoming events. NEW documentation 🎉 Security Statement – provides the terms under which Unity may be accessed and used. All use of Unity must adhere to these guidelines to help ensure fair and equitable access. Terms of Service – provides information on the security of the Unity platform. ANNOUNCEMENTS 📢 🗓️ Attend the Unity Workshop for Social Science this Friday 9/27 at 12:00 PM!

Unity Digest 9/13/24

Fri, 13 Sep 2024 08:00:00 -0400

Hi Unity Users! This week’s digest includes new documentation and important announcements that you won’t want to miss. NEW documentation 🎉 MPI documentation on how to compile and run code that supports running on multiple nodes natively. Bioinformatics datasets documentation on commonly used datasets by bioinformatics domains. ANNOUNCEMENTS 📢 🎉 Our own ColabFold MSAServer is live! You can now use our ColabFold MsaServer with the --host-url http://cfold-db:8888 option. This option will be added to the ColabFold documentation soon.

Fall Workshops from the University of Rhode Island AI Lab

Fri, 06 Sep 2024 08:00:00 -0400

The University of Rhode Island’s Artificial Intelligence (URI AI) Lab invites the Unity community to attend the following data and computational science-focused workshops. The URI AI Lab is dedicated to interdisciplinary research and learning in the context of use-inspired AI. The Lab runs workshops on common AI tools and offers consultancy for research and educational projects. For questions regarding the URI AI Lab workshops, contact Indrani Mandal.

Unity Ubuntu 24.04 Update on 10/22/24

Thu, 05 Sep 2024 12:00:00 -0400

On October 22, 2024, we will be upgrading all Unity servers from the current operating system (OS), Ubuntu 20.04, to the new LTS (long term support) version, 24.04. This is a critical update to the cluster to ensure continued security and stability. However, an OS update is a significant undertaking and there will be several changes that you should be aware of as a Unity user. We will be updating this list on this page, so please bookmark for your reference during the update.

Unity Digest 8/30/24

Fri, 30 Aug 2024 12:00:00 -0400

Hi Unity Users! Welcome back to the Unity Digest, which has shifted to a bi-weekly schedule since our last update. In this edition, you’ll find new and updated documentation, along with some key announcements. Let’s dive in! NEW documentation 🎉 R Parallelization. A secondary page to the Introduction to R on Unity docs that provides an overview on how to run R in parallel. UPDATED documentation ✏️ The Unity Nodes list was updated to add two new GPU features: fp64 and bf16; Node Features (Constraints) page provides the definitions under “GPU Feature”.

Weekly Digest 8/14/24

Wed, 14 Aug 2024 17:00:00 -0400

Hi Unity Users! After this week, the digest will transition to a bi-weekly schedule, so you’ll receive these updates every two weeks instead of every week. This week’s edition features one new piece of documentation and two important announcements! New documentation 🎉 Renv documentation. Provides an overview of virtual environments in R, including how to create and activate an environment, install and update packages, save and move an environment, use Python with renv, and more.

Weekly Digest 8/09/24

Fri, 09 Aug 2024 14:00:00 -0400

Hi Unity Users! This week’s Weekly Digest offers a sneak peek at some exciting documentation that’s coming your way soon! Upcoming documentation additions 👀 Renv documentation. Will provide an overview of virtual environments in R, including how to create and activate an environment, install and update packages, save and move an environment, use Python with renv, and more. R parallelization documentation. A secondary page to R docs that will provide an overview on how to run R in parallel.

Weekly Digest 8/02/24

Fri, 02 Aug 2024 10:15:00 -0400

Hi Unity Users! This week’s edition of the Weekly Digest features new documentation, updated documentation, and an exciting announcement. New documentation 🎉 Venv - Virtual environments in Python. This is an overview of virtual environments in Python, including how to create, activate, move, and deactivate an environment, install packages, and submit a slurm job with venv. Updated documentation ✏️ SSH Connection documentation was updated to recommend configuring an SSH agent so that you don’t need to enter a password every time you use SSH keys for SSH connections.

Weekly Digest 7/25/24

Thu, 25 Jul 2024 17:00:00 -0200

Hi Unity Users! This week calls for a light digest, since most of the Unity Team have been at PEARC’24! Useful updates to documentation Introduction to batch jobs was updated to include a section on checking job progress and a link to Monitor a batch job, a new documentation addition. Introduction to Slurm: The job scheduler was updated to include links to our recently added Slurm cheat sheet. Requesting an account was updated to clarify “PIs” as being faculty or select staff members who lead research groups.

Weekly Digest 7/18/24

Thu, 18 Jul 2024 17:00:00 -0400

Hi Unity Users! Welcome to the first edition of our Weekly Digest. This update will provide you all with an overview of the latest documentation, updates to existing documentation, cluster changes, and any other important announcements from your sysadmins. You can expect to receive these updates weekly. Let’s dive in! New documentation Slurm cheat sheet How to contribute to the Unity User documentation. Only for those that have access to the behind-the-scenes of our website and are beginning to actively contribute to the Unity User Documentation.

2024 Annual Maintenance Complete

Fri, 24 May 2024 17:00:00 -0400

We are pleased to announce Unity is now open for use again following our May 20 through 24, 2024 maintenance. Thank you for your patience as we performed necessary upgrades and maintenance to keep Unity running smoothly. As of today (Friday, May 24, 2024), Unity /project directories hosted on the Northeast Storage Exchange (NESE) remain offline. Unfortunately, NESE maintenance will not conclude until Wednesday, May 29th. Until the NESE team gives the go-ahead to reconnect, /project directories will not be accessible from Unity.

Annual Maintenance: May 20-24, 2024

Wed, 17 Apr 2024 11:40:45 -0500

We are approaching our annual maintenance period, which coincides with the MGHPCC’s data center maintenance shutdown. Unity, including login access and storage, will be offline from Monday, May 20th at 9 am Eastern through Friday, May 24th for necessary maintenance and upgrades. During this time, you will not be able to log in to Unity, including Unity-connected storage. We appreciate your patience during this disruption and will work to restore Unity access as quickly as possible following network restoration Friday afternoon.

Spring Workshops from the University of Rhode Island AI Lab

Wed, 07 Feb 2024 09:24:55 -0500

Unity Team Seeking RAs for Spring 2024: Apply Now!

Tue, 19 Dec 2023 16:00:06 -0500

Description Position title: CDS-RCD Research Assistant (RA) The Center for Data Science (CDS) in partnership with Research Computing and Data (RCD) at UMass Amherst is looking for up to three PhD student research assistants (RAs) for 10 - 20 hours per week during Spring 2024. RAs will support a broad range of researchers using the Unity HPC platform. As a facilitation RA, you have the opportunity to learn about high performance computing, computational science, and research computing facilitation under the guidance of experienced research computing facilitators.

Winter Break at Unity

Thu, 14 Dec 2023 17:00:00 -0500

Happy holidays, Unity Community! The Unity facilitation and systems administration teams will have reduced services and help hours from Monday, December 18, 2023, until Tuesday, January 2, 2024. During this time, please allow additional time for responses on help tickets and the Unity User Community Slack. In addition, we will not be holding Zoom office hours until the UMass Amherst Spring semester begins on February 1, 2024. The first session of Zoom office hours in 2024 is Tuesday, February 6, 2024, from 2:30 pm to 4 pm EST.

New Documentation Launched

Tue, 21 Nov 2023 13:04:56 -0600

Going green! The Unity documentation, portal, and Open OnDemand have a green new look! To better reflect Unity’s collaborative nature and residence at the MGHPCC, we’ve adopted a green color scheme across our services. Refreshed documentation We’ve launched our new documentation site! In addition to technical documentation, the new site features Unity news, events, and expanded Unity cluster and team information. If you have any questions or feedback about the new website, please email hpc@umass.

Unity Community Newsletter: Fall 2023

Wed, 18 Oct 2023 11:23:07 -0500

mail Dear Unity Community Welcome to the inaugural issue of the Unity User Community newsletter! In these correspondences, we hope to inform the community about Unity updates and changes, advertise workshops and educational events, and highlight the phenomenal research that relies on Unity for computing resources. As we move into the final quarter of 2023, we’re reflecting on where Unity has been and where we hope to go in the future.

Unity Feature Announcements

Fri, 21 Jul 2023 12:13:45 -0700

As of 1:30 pm on 7/21, the Gypsum nodes and storage are operational again. Thank you for your patience. In addition, we’d like to take this opportunity to announce a few new Unity features and remind you of our upcoming GPU workshop! Introduction to Using GPUs on Unity Unity facilitator Connor Kenyon of the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth will present a workshop on the available GPU resources on Unity. During this workshop, participants will gain experience accessing and utilizing a GPU in both interactive Jupyter sessions as well as with SLURM.

Unity Summer Events

Fri, 30 Jun 2023 06:55:33 -0400

Today we have three event updates to share. All workshops will be recorded, so there will be the opportunity to view later if you can’t join us live! Predict protein structures on Unity with Colabfold TODAY (6/30/23 at 2 pm Eastern) is the Predict protein structures on Unity with Colabfold Workshop!! Unity facilitator Cecile Cres of the University of Rhode Island will present a workshop on ColabFold. During this workshop, participants will gain experience with protein structure prediction using Colabfold.

Unity Portal / Login Maintenance 6/30 & Scratch and NCBI Announcements

Fri, 23 Jun 2023 12:15:07 -0400

Happy Friday! We have three announcements today: Login Node and OOD Portal Maintenance On Friday, June 30, 2023, from 7 am to 9 am EDT, the Unity login nodes, Unity portal, and Open OnDemand portal will be inaccessible for maintenance. No running batch jobs will be affected, but interactive jobs may be disconnected. Open OnDemand jobs are considered “batch” jobs and will be able to be resumed after maintenance, but you will experience some interruption.

Unity Open OnDemand Server Upgrade 6/14/23

Tue, 13 Jun 2023 13:03:35 -0400

In order to resolve some sluggishness and instability in our Open OnDemand server, ood.unity.rc.umass.edu will be offline for a server upgrade from 7 am to 9 am on 6/14/23.

ColabFold and `srun`

Mon, 12 Jun 2023 14:22:55 -0400

We have two announcements today: a clarification on a Slurm change to the srun feature and the details of a workshop about ColabFold on Unity. srun inside srun Our Slurm update changed the behavior of the srun command when used inside an interactive srun session. If you want to use srun to launch tasks in an interactive srun session, launch the “outer” srun with the “–overlap” flag and it should have the same behavior as before.

Unity Maintenance Concluded

Sat, 10 Jun 2023 13:45:49 -0400

Unity Users, We are pleased to announce Unity is now open for use again following our June 5 through June 10, 2023 maintenance. Thank you for your patience as we performed necessary upgrades and maintenance to keep Unity running smoothly. We’ve included a copy of the change list below. If you have any questions or encounter any issues, please submit a ticket to hpc@umass.edu. In addition to the announced changes below, we’re currently resolving a problem with the Mathematica license.

Unity Maintenance Reminder (2023-06-05)

Fri, 02 Jun 2023 12:46:23 -0400

We are quickly approaching our annual maintenance period! Unity will be completely offline from June 5th at midnight (the start of June 5th) through June 10th for necessary maintenance and upgrades. This coincides with the annual shutdown at the datacenter Unity lives at, the MGHPCC. Once Unity is back online and ready for use again, we will send a follow up email. Until then, I invite you to join us on our Unity User Community Slack where you can get the most up-to-date information and chat with the Unity team.

Unity Maintenance 6/5 Update & Service Outage 5/26

Tue, 23 May 2023 13:31:49 -0400

On Friday, May 26th, from 7 am to 9 am, we will be migrating the server that hosts the Unity Web Portal and JupyterHub. Those services will be unavailable during that time. Open OnDemand, SSH access to Unity, and batch jobs will not be affected. Maintenance Update As a reminder, Unity will be offline from June 5th to June 10th, 2023, for our annual maintenance. You will not be able to access your data during this time, so plan accordingly!