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Consulting Services

HPC Consulting Services

Important: Listserv Changes

Starting Wednesday, July 30, 2025, emails sent to the hpc-consult listserv automatically create a ticket in ServiceNow. This change helps us improve support tracking. Submitting tickets directly via the ServiceNow link below remains unchanged.

Please note that when you email hpc-consult, we will reach out to you via the generated ServiceNow ticket and will not respond to your email directly.

Services We Offer

Contact Us

Consulting is available free of cost to everyone and we welcome you to reach out! Our services include, but are not limited to:

  • Help for new users getting started with our resources. We know using HPC systems for the first time can be intimidating so scheduling a meeting where you can ask loads of questions can help a lot.
  • Online drop-in office hours is available to help both new and experienced users alike with any system questions they may have.
  • Support for general issues that may occur, e.g., why is my job spending so long in the queue, where can I find information on topic <A>, why is this strange and unexpected thing happening, etc.
  • Advice on code optimization and utilizing our resources more effectively/efficiently.

Support Policies

To ensure you get the fastest and most accurate support possible, please take a quick look at the following guidelines guidelines before reaching out.

  1. Submit a Ticket

    Use of hpc-consult

    If you are using the retired hpc-consult listserv to contact us, please note that this will automatically generate a ServiceNow ticket. We will reply to you via a ServiceNow email and will not respond to your email directly.

    When reaching out to the consulting team, please use a ServiceNow ticket. Submitting a ticket immediately notifies all members of our team and allows us to efficiently track and coordinate responses. This is the fastest and most reliable way to receive support (we promise!).

    Please do not email individual staff members directly(1), reply to HPC announcements, or start help threads using the hpc-chat listserv(2). Communications sent this way aren't tracked and may be overlooked. If we receive a support question through one of these channels, we’ll open a ServiceNow ticket on your behalf so our team can respond through the proper system.

    1. Emails directed to individual staff may go unseen if that staff member is out of the office, has retired, or has a very full inbox.
    2. We will cc this listserv when responding to ServiceNow tickets. This is for internal tracking purposes only.

  2. Availability

    Our consulting team is available from 8:00 am - 5:00 pm Monday through Friday. We're unavailable on weekends and university holidays. We welcome you to reach out any time, but to be aware that you will likely not receive a response outside of normal business hours.

    If you anticipate an urgent issue arising outside business hours (for example, a job close to expiring or an xdisk nearing its end date), we recommend contacting us in advance so we can help you plan ahead.

  3. Double-check our FAQs and Documentation

    Before reaching out for help, double-check that your question has not been answered in our FAQs or general documentation. We actively update our public documentation to include answers to frequent user issues, address common points of confusion, provide training materials and walkthroughs, and more, so you may find what you're looking for there.

  4. Include Details and Context

    When you open a ticket, include as much relevant information as possible, such as:

    • What you were trying to do
    • The exact commands you ran
    • Any error messages you received
    • Which cluster was involved
    • Your NetID, if you're contacting us from a departmental or unaffiliated email address.

    Providing us with details and context upfront helps us diagnose and resolve your issues much faster.

Visualization Consulting

Visualization Consulting is a service that allows researchers to create graphical representations of their data. These computer-generated images and animations allow researchers to visually analyze that data and see the results of changing specific parameters. Services include consultation, demonstration, and training for high-resolution visualization output and simulation.

Visualization consulting can be requested by contacting vislab-consult@list.arizona.edu

We also offer drop-in hours at the Main Library. https://libcal.library.arizona.edu/event/10712342