D3.6 is an update of the D3.5 deliverable (Zenodo link: https://zenodo.org/record/514351#.W72yy_aYTwk) Nowadays, to build, run and configure up‐to‐date weather and climate models takes many more components than just the source codes. Models are subject to a long list of dependencies in the form of libraries, open source and/or commercial software packages or many other pieces of software to be available to the users such as system utilities. These requirements make the life of system administrators in HPC centres hard. When a new user gets resources on a specific platform, it will take time before the actual simulations can start, because platform related problems with models and software need to be solved first. This deliverable provides a recommended methodology to select, configure and install a complete ESM software stack in the form of a handbook. This handbook is intended to ease the deployment of models and to reduce the time to start simulations at an HPC facility both informing the scientists and the HPC systems administrators. The time to solution from idea to published result should thus be substantially reduced. Ideally, following the guidelines in this document, the centres willing to run weather and climate models will be prepared to offer all the tools required by these models, and their users, the scientists. For clarity, in this document we do not define the software stack needed for a centre to run weather and climate models. This definition comes from the deliverable D3.11. D3.6 is an update of the D3.5 deliverable (Zenodo link: https://zenodo.org/record/514351#.W72yy_aYTwk) This current version of the handbook reviews, completes and refactors the first version of the document. A clearer section with requirements distributed by topics has been added and the work done with automated software management has been moved into the last section.

ESiWACE has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under Grant Agreement No 675191