Requesting ICE Access

ICE access is requested once per course or workshop, and it is the instructor or organizer who requests it, not individual students. If you are a student, you do not need this page: your instructor already requested the allocation your class uses, and you were added to it. This page is for the instructor, TA, or workshop organizer who needs to set that access up in the first place.

Navigate to https://pace.gatech.edu/ice-cluster/ and click on “Other Faculty” Form

What you will need before you start the form

The form asks for a fair amount of detail up front, so it helps to have this ready rather than filling it out cold:

• Contact and course basics. Your preferred contact method, home department, and who the request is for (you, or someone else you are requesting on behalf of).
• TA and co-instructor GT usernames, if you know them yet.
• Course term, course number(s) and sections (VIP courses use a 3-character section or team code instead), and course title. Cross-listed sections all need to be listed.
• Enrollment estimates, undergraduate and graduate separately.
• Resource requirements, covering the maximum concurrent cores your class might need at once, whether you need a shared directory for course materials or software, and whether GPUs are needed.
• Software your course will use, and whether you plan to install it yourself, have students self-install it, or need PACE’s help.
• Datasets, if your course uses any, particularly common AI training datasets. PACE keeps a list of datasets already available on ICE in KB0043842, which is worth checking before you ask for something new.
• Whether ICE will be used for in-class work, not just homework and projects. This affects how PACE plans capacity.

None of this needs to be exact. PACE follows up after submission to work through the specifics with you.

What you are agreeing to

The form ends with a set of acknowledgments you check off before submitting. The ones worth knowing about in advance:

• ICE is for educational use only, and only students, instructors, TAs, and IT support staff may access the system.
• PACE does not support students directly. Students cannot open tickets with PACE; instructors, TAs, or local IT staff are expected to handle student-facing support.
• At least one instructor or TA must attend an ICE orientation session before access is granted. PACE coordinates scheduling with the course instructor.
• PACE cannot stop users from changing permissions on their own files, which can expose them to other users. PACE is not responsible for FERPA issues that result from that.
• PACE runs a 3-day maintenance window every 3 months. ICE, including file access, is unavailable during that window.
• Uploaded data is subject to the retention policy described in KB0042094, and instructors are expected to pass that along to students and TAs.

After you submit

PACE follows up to go over your software and resource needs, including any limits on licensed software. Once the account is provisioned, you and your students will receive the same welcome email covered in 102, Logging Into OnDemand and SSH, with the login details you need to connect.

Next step

• Already have access and just need to log in? Go back to 102, Logging Into OnDemand and SSH.
• Want more background before you request access? See 103, Understanding the PACE Ecosystem.
• Looking for other orientation material? See 105, Orientation Resources.

PACE note: This page is based on the ICE Request form in the IT Service Catalog and the ICE cluster page on the PACE website, both current as of August 2026. Form fields, contacts, and policies can change, so confirm against the live form before submitting.