Argon consists of 4 login nodes and hundreds of compute nodes. Basically, you log in to the login nodes and submit commands to be run on the compute nodes. Several of the compute nodes belong to the Department of Biostatistics; the remaining nodes belong to other researchers throughout the University, or are dedicated for general use (i.e., belong to the University as a whole).
When you log in to Argon, your commands will be running on one of the four login nodes. These nodes are shared by everyone at the University of Iowa who uses the Argon cluster. It is extremely important that you do not run computer-intensive jobs on the login nodes – if the login nodes are overburdened, no one can access the compute nodes. This is the cardinal rule of using the cluster:
Running computer-intensive jobs is what the compute nodes are for.