Helix Systems accounts are restricted to NIH employees and contractors as determined by inclusion in the NIH Enterprise Directory. Helix users must each have their own account. In addition, NIH Password Policy states that "Users are prohibited from sharing passwords with each other and each user must have a separate, unique password."

NIH Volunteers can maintain Helix/Biowulf accounts for the duration of their NIH status, but will get access to fewer Helix Systems resources than NIH employees and contractors.

How to get an account on any of the Helix Systems

To access any of the Helix Systems machines, you need a Helix Systems account. Your Account Sponsor can request one by using the WebSponsor online form at http://websponsor.cit.nih.gov/nihlogin. (The Account Sponsor is the person in your lab or office who is responsible for the CIT account to which your Helix account will be billed). If you, your lab or office do not have a CIT account, you will need to complete the CIT account authorization (http://support.cit.nih.gov/accounts/) to set one up.

Who is my Account Sponsor

If you don't know who your Account Sponsor is, go to the webpage at http://silk.nih.gov/locator, select your Institute/Center from the Account Sponsors and Alternates list, and click the Display button. This will display all the Account Sponsors for your Institute/Center, and you may be able to identify the appropriate person from the list. Otherwise, talk to your supervisor, or call the NIH Help Desk at 301-496-4357 for assistance.

The Helix User registration and CIT account authorization forms are also available from the NIH Help Desk, which can be reached at 301-496-4357. Fax your completed form to (301) 402-7349.

Once your request is processed by the Customer Accounts Office, a copy will be sent to you with your username and password. If you have questions about the status of your request, call the NIH Help Desk at (301) 496-4357 or contact them online.

Charges

There is a charge of $20.00 per month for a Helix Systems account. This gives the user access to all of the Helix Systems machines and associated services (e.g. Sciware).

Biowulf users must submit an online request describing their intended use, to verify that the Biowulf system is best suited for their purpose. There is no additional charge for a Biowulf account.

Home directory disk space is charged at $5/GB/month with a minimum charge of $1 per month.

What can I do with a Helix Account

A Helix Account entitles you to access our scientific databases and applications and resources (http://helix.nih.gov/Applications). The different machines are intended for different purposes.

• Helix is the front-end machine, and is used for interactive computing.
• Sciware is an application service, where scientific applications are made available for running on your own desktop machine. The use of Sciware requires a Helix account.
• Helixweb is a server that runs a variety of web-based scientific tools.
• Biowulf (http://biowulf.nih.gov) is a Linux cluster with over 6500 processors for parallelized scientific applications or large numbers of independent simultaneous jobs.