New User Information

How to Get an Account
Who can request an account

ORC research computing resources are provided at no charge to Mason faculty.  Postdoctoral research fellows and students both undergraduate and graduate may apply for accounts but must provide a responsible faculty member as a sponsor for the request.

Getting Started

Note: You must have Mason credentials to get an account.

Request an account on the cluster by filling out the ORC Account Request Form.

All non-faculty user account requests require a faculty sponsor. Please put the name of the faculty who is sponsoring your account on the account request form.

Please allow three working days for the account creation process.  You will receive an email once the account has been created.

New User Tutorial

ORC requires that all new cluster users complete a video tutorial. You will receive an email with links to watch the video tutorial.  Once you inform us that you have watched the video tutorials,  we will do the needful for you to submit jobs on the cluster.  Please note that it takes up to three working days for this process.  Please send email to orchelp@gmu.edu if you have do not get an email from us.

Instructional Use

The ORC supports the use of its facilities for educational use.  If you are interested in using our resources in a class please submit a help request to set up a meeting to discuss the class requirements. 

We have some additional policies governing the educational use of our systems:

  • Instructors must give a minimum of 2 weeks’ notice prior to the start of class.  If class-specific software is required please allow an additional 2 weeks notice to allow for software installation.​ Software for instructional use may also be subject to our general software request policies.
  • Students in the class will be required to take our new user tutorial unless they already have access to the cluster.  We will be happy to provide a special presentation of the tutorial by arrangement for entire class sections.
  • Submit privilege will be suspended after the end of the class period, exceptions may be provided upon instructor approval.