Protected Environment
On this page
The table of contents requires JavaScript to load.
The Center for High Performance Computing operates a Protected Environment (PE) for researchers with sponsored research projects and work with data that is sensitive in nature. These resources have been reviewed and vetted by the university's security and compliance offices as an appropriate place to work with Protected Health Information (PHI). If you have data with other compliance requirements, please let us know well in advance so that we may ensure that the PE meets the needs of your project.
If you would like to learn more about the PE, please check the Protected Environment Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) page and contact us if you have any additional questions or concerns.
| Only CHPC staff system administrators will have root to hosts in the Protected Environment, and only sponsored research projects with HIPAA/PHI or other specific data restrictions will be provisioned in the PE. |
|
If you decide to work with protected or regulated data outside of the CHPC's designated Protected Environment, please know that you'll need to investigate any required agreements that must be in place in accordance with the HIPAA regulations prior to creating, processing, maintaining, or transmitting ePHI/PII (Protected Health Information or Personally Identifiable Information). This may include a Business Associate Agreement or a valid Institutional Review Board (IRB) or other agreement, as appropriate. More information is available from the Privacy Office and IRB. A list of existing BAAs with the University of Utah, accessible to those allowed by role-based security, can be found online. |
Resources in the Protected Environment
The Protected Environment consists of
- An HPC cluster (redwood)
- Interactive nodes (bristlecone)
- A Windows server (narwhal)
- A Virtual Machine (VM) farm (prismatic/prismatic2)
- Storage
- Home, /uufs/chpc.utah.edu/common/HIPAA/your uNID
- Project, /uufs/chpc.utah.edu/common/HIPAA/name of project directory
- Scratch, /scratch/general/pe-nfs1
- Archive (elm)
Starting a new project in the Protected Environment
If you would like to start a new project in the PE, please see our documentation on projects and submit a Needs Assessment.
Start a new project or learn more about projects
Requesting access to an existing Protected Environment project (creating an account)
| If you don't already have a PE account, an account will be created for you when your PE Request is approved. If you already have a PE account, your existing account will be added to the new project when your PE Request is approved. |
If you are requesting access to an existing project in the Protected Environment, please see our instructions for submitting a PE Request.
Connecting to the Protected Environment
If you have a PE account and need to connect to resources within the PE, please see our documentation on options for connecting.