2026-03-10 –, Main Hall
The GOOD25 conference served as a significant platform for advancing knowledge beyond the fundamentals of Open OnDemand. Numerous presenters introduced tools and strategies aimed at extending the capabilities of the OnDemand portal and enhancing the overall user experience within high-performance computing (HPC) environments. This presentation will analyze several of the most influential approaches highlighted during the event and discuss their successful integration into our center’s operations over the past year.
The University at Buffalo Center for Computational Research (UBCCR) has been using the OnDemand portal for nearly 10 years. In collaboration with the Ohio Supercomputer Center (OSC), UBCCR integrated XDMoD analytics into the OnDemand dashboard to display job metrics and efficiency factors. However, aside from small configurations to OnDemand interactive apps and branding, we’ve made no other modifications to the application. The author attended the GOOD25 conference with the goal of learning how to tailor OnDemand to improve the experience for UBCCR’s HPC users. The event proved invaluable, beginning with the Contributor Jam and continuing through dynamic daily developer forums hosted by OSC. Surprisingly, some of the most impactful insights came from other OnDemand users, who shared how they customized the software, developed advanced interactive applications, and integrated external tools. This presentation will highlight how UBCCR leveraged the generosity and expertise of the Open OnDemand community to enhance user experience and optimize HPC cluster utilization. The core focus will be a new workflow that enables users to check compute node availability via the Slurm dashboard (https://www.slurmdash.com/) developed by Arizona State University, and then monitor jobs and evaluate efficiency using the Jobstats tool and Grafana charts from Princeton (https://github.com/PrincetonUniversity/jobstats). Additionally, we will share how small but strategic improvements to interactive apps - based on insights from Tufts and Harvard - significantly benefited our bioinformatics users. Beyond tools and technical enhancements, this talk will underscore the collaborative opportunities fostered by GOOD25 and how those conversations have enabled UBCCR to deliver a more streamlined and user-focused HPC experience.
Dori Sajdak is the Assistant Director of User Services at the University at Buffalo, Center for Computational Research.