AHPCC-Only Systems
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Alliance Partnership Systems
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Principal Investigator (PI)
Alliance Account Policy of Acceptable
Use and Security Policies
AHPCC's Good Neighbor Policy
How to Acknowledge UNM/NCSA Support
Principal
Investigator (PI)
Startup allocations
are targeted at new users or users who have very modest computational
requirements (less than 10,000 hours). To apply, an eligible Principal
Investigator (PI) must submit an application available on any of
the partner web pages listed below. A full proposal is not normally
required. There is only one startup given to each PI. Requests for startup
awards can be submitted at any time and take about one month to process.
People entitled to use AHPCC
and Alliance systems: UNM faculty, staff, and students along with their
authorized collaborators; university and government researchers who
submit an appropriate project proposal.
Persons employed by Federally funded Research and Development Centers
(FFRDCs-e.g., NRL, DOE, NASA) are not normally supported. However, a
scientist, engineer or educator who has a joint appointment with a university
and a Federal agency (such as a Veterans Administration Hospital, or
with a university and an FFRDC) may submit proposals through the university
and may receive support if he/she is a bona fide faculty member of the
university, although part of his/her salary may be provided by the Federal
agency. Under unusual circumstances, other Federal agencies and FFRDCs
may submit proposals directly to NSF. Preliminary inquiry should be
made to the appropriate program before preparing a proposal for submission.
You can read more details in the NSF Grant Proposal Guide.
Guidelines for
Acknowledging Support
An acknowledgement of UNM-Alliance support must appear in publications
of any material, whether copyrighted or not, based on or developed with
resources of the University of New Mexico and the Alliance.
Suggested Wording
We would like to thank the University of New Mexico for access
to their Albuquerque High Performance Computing Center. This work utilized
the UNM-Alliance Linux Superclusters.
Submitting Copies
Copies of technical reports and publications using AHPCC
resources should be sent to AHPCC with the grant number listed with
your login information.
Acceptable Use and Security for Alliance
Accounts Policy
Acceptable Use
By accepting an UNM-Alliance Supercluster account, I agree that:
- I will be responsible for all use of this computer account.
- I will use the computer account for High Performance Computing purposes
and not for commercial purposes.
- I will not use the computer account to engage in any form of illegal
software copying or other copyright infringement.
- I will not attempt to access accounts, files or information belonging
to other users without their knowledge and consent.
- I understand the monitoring of user activity on the Albuquerque
High Performance Computing Center machines may occur.
FAILURE TO COMPLY WITH THESE RULES WILL RESULT IN REMOVAL OF THIS
ACCOUNT, AND POSSIBLE DISCIPLINARY OR LEGAL ACTION.
Security
Users are provided an initial Default Password in their new user
packet. You should change your password the first time you login and
periodically thereafter. If it is necessary for you to request a
password change from us (for example, when you have forgotten your current
password), your password will be set to this default. It
is important that you keep this form in a secure place for your reference.
If you do not have this form available, you will be required to wait
until a duplicate can be mailed to you via U.S. mail. AHPCC does NOT
provide passwords by phone, fax, or electronic mail.
AHPCC's
"Good Neighbor" Use Policy
The following guidelines for the appropriate use of AHPCC computing
facilities are to be followed by all users. These guidelines are meant
to ensure the security of user accounts as well as equitable access
to our computing facilities by all users.
Acceptable Use
By accepting an UNM-Alliance Linux Supercluster account, I agree
that:
- I will be responsible for all use of this computer account.
- I will use the computer account for High Performance Computing
purposes and not for commercial purposes.
- I will not use the computer account to engage in any form of illegal
software copying or other copyright infringement.
- I will not attempt to access accounts, files or information belonging
to other users without their knowledge and consent.
- I understand the monitoring of user activity on the Albuquerque
High Performance Computing Center machines may occur.
FAILURE TO COMPLY WITH THESE RULES WILL RESULT IN REMOVAL OF THIS ACCOUNT,
AND POSSIBLE DISCIPLINARY OR LEGAL ACTION.
Security
Users are provided an initial Default Password in their new
user packet. You should change your password the first time you login
and periodically thereafter. If it is necessary for you to request a
password change from us (for example, when you have forgotten your current
password), your password will be set to this default. It is important
that you keep this form in a secure place for your reference. If you
do not have this form available, you will be required to wait until
a duplicate can be mailed to you via U.S. mail. AHPCC does NOT provide
passwords by phone, fax, or electronic mail.
General Considerations
The following considerations apply to running codes on any
AHPCC computer.
- Users must regularly monitor their jobs to ensure that they
are not overburdening or hanging the machine they are using. This
is especially important for machines that are being used interactively.
Under UNIX, the ps, lsps, and vmstat commands provide
useful information about CPU utilization and the amount of paging
(memory utilization) that is going on in a system.
- Jobs running for long periods on machines that are used interactively
should be run with their priority reduced 10 units or more. (See the
man pages for the nice and renice commands.)
- Users should not lock the screen on terminals/computers intended
for public use when they are to be left unattended for more than a
few moments.
- Users should keep an Xterm window (console window) open to receive
system messages.
- All users should maintain current .plan, and if necessary,
.forward files for their AHPCC accounts. These will allow us
to provide you with timely notification of system shutdowns, changes
to software, etc. They also allow us to contact you should a program
you are running cause a problem with the system. The .plan
file should provide your name, current contact information (day and
evening phone numbers), and a brief description of the work you are
doing at the AHPCC. Your .plan file should also state whether
or not your AHPCC account is your primary account for reading E-mail.
If your AHPCC account is not your primary mail account, you should
also set up a .forward file to ensure that a copy of all your
messages are forwarded to your primary account.
- Access times. Access hours at the AHPCC are in general divided into
2 categories: prime time and non-prime time. During prime hours, which
run from 8am to 5pm on weekdays, priority access is given to workshops
or classes, students doing class work, parallel code development,
and production computation in that order. During non-prime hours,
which begin 15 minutes after the end of prime hours and end 15 minutes
before the start of prime hours, priority is generally given to production
computation, code development, and systems maintenance in that order.
Security Considerations
- No passwords, for AHPCC or any other machines, whether inside or
outside the University, are to be kept in a personal file on the AHPCC
file system such as the .rhosts file, .netrc file, unless
the file is encrypted with strong encryption (e.g. DES or public
key encryption). Violation of this condition may lead to immediate
and permanent expulsion from AHPCC systems. Any such violation will
also be reported to the MHPCC and NCSA, since it is anticipated that
this condition will apply as well to any accounts eventually granted
on other HPCERC or PACI partner machines. For security reasons, it
is strongly recommended that users adhere to this policy on all network
machines on which he or she has accounts.
- For your own protection and that of the AHPCC community, the AHPCC
password shall consist of a minimum of 8 characters with no repeats.
At least one character should be a non-alphabetic character. The user's
name should not appear as any part of the password. Adherence to this
policy will be spot-checked with standard password-breaking security
programs.
- Users making insecure remote connections (e.g., telnet and rlogin)
or remote mail services should make it a practice to regularly change
their passwords. Once every three months is suggested. If possible
users should use secure connections, e.g. SSH (secure shell), etc.
Use of Silicon Graphics Visualization Computer
("Nambe")
Nambe is a Silicon Graphics Onyx 2 purchased by the Visualization
Group at the AHPCC, and members of the Visualization Group therefore
have priority access to it. When not being used by the visualization
group, the primary use of the machine should be for running graphically
intensive applications, such as scientific visualization or computer-aided
design software.
Users should adhere to the following guidelines for using the machine
as a computational engine:
- Production jobs, i.e. longer than 5 minutes, should be run with
their priority reduced by 10 or more.
- No single job should be submitted for a run exceeding 8 hours, and
if possible run at night. Runs of longer length should only be started
after consulting system administrators.
- Avoid using more than 4 processors simultaneously for serial or
parallel calculations. This will leave sufficient capacity for people
running most graphical applications on the machine.
- Parallel jobs using shared memory parallelization should be properly
tested and benchmarked before being run in a production mode.
- During prime hours, users should not run jobs requiring more than
50% of system memory.
Note: It is frequently necessary to reserve the machine for
demonstration or visualization group use, sometimes on short notice.
- "Suitable notice" for a demonstration or other visualization
use is considered to be 24 hours. Notice should be given in the message
of the day (motd) at login. The hours for this use will be stated
clearly.
- If suitable notice is not possible, jobs may be terminated or suspended
without notice. Email notice will then be provided as to when suspended
jobs may be restarted.
Use of the Linux Clusters
The Alliance's Linux Superclusters, LosLobos and RoadRunner, are
for production. They operate as a cluster for parallel computing research
and development. Use of the Linux cluster for education compliments
its production computations.
The primary purpose of the AHPCC's Linux clusters are as an
educational and research tool. In the first role, they operate as terminals
for workshops and classes. In the second role, they operate as a cluster
for parallel computing research and development. Use of the Linux cluster
for production computation is a secondary purpose.
During regular working hours, and perhaps a few hours on either side,
users should not use the Linux cluster for computations. An exception
to this may be possible during scheduled university holidays, but only
with the consent of the system administrators.
Use of other workstations
Other workstations, e.g. IBM workstations, HP workstations,
and SGI workstations, are very limited in number and should mainly be
used for code development and for running applications that are specific
to those machines. Users should not use them for large or long computations,
particularly during the day. Computations run at night should be run
at very low priority so that dialup users may access the machines.
Use of servers
Systems that are designated as file servers, web servers,
and name servers should never be used for doing computations.
In general, users should avoid using them at all. The only exception
to the latter rule is when you are moving a large file to or from the
AHPCC file system, or between partitions on the AHPCC file system. In
this case, it is probably advantageous, because of the reduced network
traffic, to perform this operation directly on the file server. Consult
the AHPCC User's Guide on the AHPCC web site for information about servers.
© Copyright 1999-2000,
Albuquerque High Performance Computing
Center
