Operational Guidelines

Based on the established usage policy for central HPC resources, the following operational guidelines have been established to define and govern how facilities will be managed on a day-to-day basis. These may be modified as needed to adapt to ongoing operational requirements or changes in the HPC systems configurations.

Acceptable Use

Usage Guidelines

Usage of high-performance computing facilities is subject to UNT policies found in the UNT Policy Manual.

Policies that apply include:

Please carefully read these documents as your use constitutes an explicit and binding agreement to abide by relevant federal and state laws as well as UNT policies.

UNT HPC Center's Rights and Responsibility

HPC staff has the rights and responsibility to:

  • Make reasonable efforts to ensure that facilities are maintained and operated to a level to serve the requirements of researchers.
  • Allocate resources in regard to the HPC Advisory Committee's specified priorities of research initiatives.
  • Provide materials on the website or otherwise to help ensure researchers can make optimal use of resources.
  • Monitor performance of research jobs in order to facilitate efficient use of facilities and prevent abuse of resources. This may result in staff contacting users to suggest ways to increase efficiency of system use.
  • Act upon any complaints in an appropriate manner under the circumstances in the best interest of researchers and facility.
  • Suspend or deny access to user accounts for any attempted or confirmed violations of any policies.
  • Suspend or terminate accounts after repeated unsuccessful attempts to contact a user regarding the account. Data associated with the account will be made available to the users sponsor upon request from the sponsor. If the user is a sponsor, data will be stored to the best of our ability for a period not to exceed 1 year, and then is subject to being permanently deleted.
  • In the event of a dispute between a user and their sponsoring PI, require expressly written authorization from the sponsor detailing the desired course of action for any associated data. HPC staff reserves the right to terminate accounts, compress, archive, move, or completely remove the data in question as deemed necessary.
  • Guarantee reasonable methods are in place to protect the privacy of facility users.
  • Use any means necessary to ensure facilities are secure which may include but is not limited to testing passwords for strength, performing security scans, and accessing user data.
  • Inform users of their individual rights and responsibilities in the use of facilities. Also, to succinctly communicate the policies under which access to resources is granted.
  • Report utilization data to management and various authorized stakeholders.
  • Release data or information to appropriate authorities where required to do so by law or judicial order.
  • Not be held liable for sensitive data including classified data that is kept on UNT HPC facility without prior and explicit written consent.
  • Not be held liable to for any loss or corruption of data in the event of drive, server, storage, power, or other forms of failure. It is highly recommended that all users maintain redundant off-site backups of all their data including code, job input and job output.

User Rights and Responsibility

HPC facility users have the rights and responsibility to:

  • Be accountable for the use of any resources consumed by the user or accounts that the user sponsors. This includes reporting publications resulting from research conducted on UNT HPC facilities, providing appropriate written descriptions of the use of the facilities and acknowledging such use in publications and reports.
  • HPC resources (the type and number of nodes that will be made available) will be granted based on the estimated requirements of the research project in coordination with the resulting impact on overall resource availability.
  • Seek permission by contacting hpc-admin@unt.edu in advance for use of facilities beyond standard allocations.
  • Access an HPC account only with proper authentication. Attempts to circumvent proper authentication by sharing accounts or passwords is strictly and explicitly prohibited. Attempting to intentionally discover or modify another users password is strictly and explicitly prohibited. These actions are direct violations to Texas Administrative Code §202.75, UNT Policy 3.6, and UNT Policy 3.10, which you agree to abide by when you use UNT HPC facility. Violations of these policies are grounds for immediate account suspension and/or termination.
  • Keep ALL passwords confidential and ensure that passwords are of reasonable strength. Failure to do so is cause for immediate account suspension and/or termination.
  • Avoid "sharing" passwords or accounts by logging in as any other user including students or sponsored users.
  • Request special data "sharing" arrangements by sending a message to hpc-admin@unt.edu as to avoid password or account sharing.
  • Ensure proof of license credentials is readily available for use of license-restricted software.
  • Notify staff of email address changes as soon as possible. As email is the main source of contact, it is up to user to ensure the HPC staff has a valid email address on file. In the event that an email address is discovered to be invalid, the account may be suspended until further notice.
  • Use resources in a acceptable and efficient manner that does not interfere with or impair the work of other users. Also, to only use the resources allocated.
  • Assume basic privacy in use of computing resource, but note that information such as access and utilization statistics are routinely gathered and may be reported to management and other authorized stakeholders.
  • Use facilities to store only data directly related to the research being undertaken by the user on the facilities. Facilities are never to be used for storing any data not directly related to the current resource unless approved in writing.
  • Use facilities in a way that match the characteristics of the user's requirements. Users should avoid unreasonably wasteful practices such as storing redundant copies of large data sets.
  • Refrain from attempting to gain unauthorized access to, circumvent, or otherwise impair any and all data access controls of any data or files that are stored on the system.
  • Refrain from intentionally or otherwise interfering with the normal operation of HPC facility. This includes but is not limited to circumventing security measures or exploiting any found security gaps.
  • Do not intentionally or otherwise attempting to damage software and/or other equipment.
  • Do not intentionally or otherwise using HPC facility or resources to attempt to interfere or gain unauthorized access to other machines or other networked resources.
  • Refrain from using HPC facility for any unethical or illegal endeavors. Also, by using all users agree to avoid copying or using unauthorized copyrighted software on HPC facilities. This means illegally copying, transmitting, storing, or using any material in violation of any federal or state laws is explicitly prohibited.
  • Refrain from using HPC facility to conduct personal business or otherwise for personal financial gain, which is explicitly prohibited UNLESS approval has been granted in advance.
  • Immediately report any security breaches or policy violations attempted or otherwise.

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Scheduling Guidelines

 

The information that follows should be considered guidelines for how scheduling is implemented on HPC facility. Technical implementation may change as required by usage conditions.

On newer clusters—Talon:

  • There are many factors that affect how jobs are scheduled. The amount of shares that any user has at a given time is determined by several variables including group share, resources in use, resources requested, queue priority, etc. However, if all variables are equal, jobs submitted by users with more shares thus higher priority will be scheduled first.
  • Shares and priorities are calculated by group. This means that the onus is on Principal Investigators to ensure that their group is effectively "spending" their time.
  • Priorities are calculated across all queues every 2 hours. This means the probability of a job being scheduled in a particular queue depends on a group's usage in all other queues.This also implies that recent usage weighs heavily in the scheduling algorithm.

On older clusters (HPC1, etc.):

  • Departmental groups are usually allocated a queue which operates first-in-first-out.

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Software Installation

All software used on HPC facility must be legally acquired and used according to the End-User license agreement. Attempting to or otherwise using illegally obtained software packages is explicitly prohibited. Accordingly, users must not attempt to illegitimately copy software that exists on HPC facility unless such copying is permitted by the End-User license agreement or copyright owner. Some software, especially scientific packages require group membership in order to access.

In addition the following applies:

  • HPC staff aims to always correctly install such software packages as well as maintain it so that it functions correctly. However, the support HPC staff can provide is limited in both availability of personnel and availability of domain specific knowledge on each specific software package.
  • User-developed software is provided limited supported as time allowed. This means that while HPC staff aims to help each user with the technical aspects of developing their code, staff will not normally perform any actually development. In addition, code that has been developed by users under guidance from HPC staff or not, is not directly supported. In other words, if the application malfunctions, the onus is on the user to devote resources to troubleshoot, not HPC staff.
  • Normally only software that has the ability to operate in batch mode is supported. Interactive software (requires a graphic user interface or constant user input) is generally not suitable for use in a batch environment such as an HPC facility.
  • In general, not all computationally-intensive software is efficient in an HPC environment. This is due to the fact that some software was never designed to operate in a batch environment or is just simply inefficient.

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Storage Guidelines

  • Standard allocations for home and scratch storage, known as scratch2, will be made for each user account created on central HPC systems.
  • Requests for allocations of resources that exceed the standard amounts may be made in writing (e-mail to hpc-admin@unt.edu).
  • Data stored on HPC systems are not subject to backup. HPC users are responsible for securing and backing up any data copied to or generated on central HPC systems.

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Privacy Guidelines

UNT HPC facility adheres to the following general privacy policy guidelines:

  • We employ all available measures to ensure the integrity and security of user communication and data. However, we cannot guarantee either.
  • It is not advisable to store sensitive data on HPC systems without obtaining permission prior to doing so. This can be done by submitting a message to hpc-admin@unt.edu
  • Staff monitors jobs submitted on HPC systems. This might include looking at number of nodes, required resources, commands, and parameters, etc.
  • Staff monitors disk usage of data stored on HPC systems. This might include directoy names, file names and organizational structure. In general, staff does not view the content of files unless asked to do so i.e., while troubleshooting.
  • Staff routinely attempts to ensure that resources are being used efficiently. For example, that jobs are efficiently using all resources allocated and that data that can be compressed is indeed compressed.

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Please direct any comments to hpc-admin@unt.edu.

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