This page explains ARCC policies for high-performance computing.

Contents

Glossary

Frequently Asked Questions

These ARCC HPC policies and procedures are intended to ensure that ARCC HPC facilities are fairly shared, effectively used, and support the University of Wyoming's research programs that rely on computational facilities not available elsewhere at the University.

Definitions

Cluster

• an assembly of computational hardware designed and configured to function together as a single system, much the way neurons work together to form a brain

Condo  

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HPC

• high-performance computing generally refers to systems that perform parallel processes at a level above a teraflop or 1012 floating-point operations per second

HPS

• high-performance storage system, usually a tiered system with media covering a range of speeds to optimize performance while reducing cost

Customer 

• a person, or group to whom ARCC provides a service

General Policies

For policies that apply to all ARCC resources, see ARCC Policies.

Usage of Login Nodes

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2.1.1 Login Node Use

Login nodes are provided for authorized users to access the Teton ARCC HPC cluster resources.

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Login nodes are intended for

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specific purposes only and should only be utilized for these specific use cases. Users may set up and submit jobs, access results from jobs, and transfer data to/from the cluster,

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using the login nodes.

As a courtesy to your colleagues,

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users should refrain from

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the following on login nodes:

• anything compute-intensive (any task(s) that uses 100% of a CPU), tasks that use significant computational/hardware resources - Example: utilizing 100% of cluster CPU)

• long-running tasks (over 10 minutes) ,

• any collection of a large number of tasks that have the same footprint on these nodes as it will results in a similar hardware use footprint to the actions listed previously.

Computationally intense work performed on login nodes WILL interfere with the ability of others to use the node resources

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and interfere with community user’s ability to log into HPC resources. To prevent this, users should submit compute intensive tasks as jobs to the compute nodes, as that is what compute nodes are for. Submitting batch jobs or requesting interactive jobs using salloc to the scheduler should be performed from login nodes. If you have any questions or need clarification, please contact arcc-help@uwyo.edu.

• Short compilations of code are permissible. If you users are doing a very parallel or long compilationcompilations, you should consider requesting a request should be made for an interactive job and doing your compilation there , and users should then perform compilation on nodes allocated after requesting an interactive job using an salloc as a courtesy to your colleagues. Compute-intensive calculations, etc. are NOT allowed on the login nodes. If system staff find such jobs running, we If you’re not sure how to do this, see an example requesting an interactive job on our wiki.

• If ARCC staff are alerted of computationally intense work or jobs being performed on a login node, they may will kill them without prior notification.

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2.1.2 Account Policy
2.1.3 Job Scheduling Policy
2.1.4 Software Policy
2.1.5 Storage Policy

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Definitions

Cluster: An assembly of computational hardware designed and configured to function together as a single system, much the way neurons work together to form a brain

Condo: A computational resource that is shared among many users — condo compute resources are used simultaneously by multiple users

HPC: High-performance computing generally refers to systems that perform parallel processes at a level above a teraflop or 1012 floating-point operations per second

HPS: High-performance storage system, usually a tiered system with media covering a range of speeds to optimize performance while reducing cost

Customer: A person, or group to whom ARCC provides a service

General Policies

For an Index of all ARCC resources policies, see ARCC Policies.