The Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment has created a suite of software that is collectively known as the basic XSEDE-compatible cluster build. It has been distributed as a Rocks roll for some time. It is now available as individual RPM packages, so that it can be downloaded and installed in portions as appropriate on existing and working clusters. In this paper, we explain the concept of the XSEDE-compatible cluster and explain how to install individual components as RPMs through use of Puppet and the XSEDE compatible cluster YUM repository.

The Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE) has created a suite of software that is collectively known as the XSEDE-Compatible Basic Cluster (XCBC). It is designed to enable smaller, resource-constrained research groups or universities to quickly and easily implement a computing environment similar to XSEDE computing resources. The XCBC system consists of the Rocks Cluster Manager, developed at the San Diego Supercomputer Center for use on Gordon and Comet, and an XSEDEspecific "Rocks Roll", containing a selection of libraries, compilers, and scientific software curated by the Campus Bridging (CB) group in the XSEDE project, kept current with those implemented on XSEDE resources. The Campus Bridging team has helped several universities implement the XCBC, and finds the design to be extremely useful for resourcelimited (in time, administrator knowledge, or funding) research groups or institutions. Here, we detail our recent experiences in implementing the XCBC design at university campuses across the country. These XCBC implementations were carried out with Campus Bridging staff traveling on-site to the partner institutions to directly assist with the cluster build. In implementing XCBC on campuses, we found that number of the needs described by campus communities as well as the broader cyberinfrastructure community are solved by technical means, although financial issues remain. The remaining issue to be addressed is technical interoperation between systems, and we describe efforts to improve here.

Researchers, scientists, engineers, granting agencies, and increasingly complex research problems have given rise to the scientific "collaboratory"-large organizations that span many institutions, with individual members working together to explore a particular phenomenon. These organizations require computational resources in order to support analyses and to provide platforms where the collaborators can interact. The XSEDE Community Infrastructure (XCI) group assists campuses in using their own resources and promotes the sharing of those resources in order to create collaboratories improving use of the nation's collective cyberinfrastructure. Currently XCI provides toolkits and training, and collaborates with organizations such as ACI-REF, XSEDE Campus Champions, and the Open Science Grid to identify tools and best practices that support the community. This paper discusses the progress in and barriers to developing a robust collaborative environment where computational resources can be shared.

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Compute resources for conducting research inhabit a wide range, including researchers' personal computers, servers in labs, campus clusters and condos, regional resource-sharing models, and national cyberinfrastructure. Researchers agree that there are not enough resources available on a broad scale, and significant barriers exist for getting analyses moved from smaller-to largerscale cyberinfrastructure. The XSEDE Campus Bridging program disseminates several tools that assist researchers and campus IT administrators in reducing barriers to the effective use of national cyberinfrastructure for research. Tools for data management, job submission and steering, best practices for building and administering clusters, and common documentation and training activities all support a flexible environment that allows cyberinfrastructure to be as simple to utilize as a plug-and-play peripheral. In this paper and the accompanying poster we provide an overview of campus bridging, including specific challenges and solutions to the problem of making the computerized parts of research easier. We focus particularly on tools that facilitate management of campus computing clusters and integration of such clusters with the national cyberinfrastructure.