Manage an Allocation

After you have received your NCSA allocation, you are responsible for managing it. You should have received a project serial number (PSN) that you will be asked to use in the course of managing your account. If you have any questions, please contact NCSA's Allocation Support.

Adding/Removing Users
Charging Algorithms
Verifying Your NCSA Account Balance
Setting Projects for Charging
Getting Refunds
Terminating, Renewing, and Extending Your Account

1. Adding/Removing Users

After your request for an allocation on an NCSA HPC system has been granted and your account has been activated, you may request to add users to your allocation if you are a Principal Investigator (PI) on the account. Over time the people who work on your project may change. When that happens, you might need to add or remove a user from your allocation. We provide short and easy-to-use Add/Remove User and forms to do so.

2. Charging Algorithms

Once you have an allocation, you will be charged for the amount of service units (SUs) used. SUs for the SGI Altix are calculated based on CPU time for the timeshared queues and wall clock time for the dedicated queues. SUs for the Linux Clusters are calculated based on wall clock time.

SGI Altix (cobalt)

IMPORTANT: Jobs running in the dedicated queues on the SGI Altix will be charged for all CPUs on the host regardless of how many processors the job uses.

The charging algorithm for the SGI Altix is as follows:

# SUs =  ServiceLevel * Time

        where:

        ServiceLevel = 1.0  for interactive use and
                                non-Industrial batch jobs
                     = 1.25 for Industrial batch jobs

        Time = Total CPU hrs (Timeshared)
             = Total Wall Clock Hrs * Number of CPUs on
                                the host (Dedicated)

Intel 64 Linux Cluster (abe)

SUs are based on the number of nodes used and the wall clock time.

# SUs = 8 * #Nodes * Wall_Time

        where:

        Wall_Time = Total Wall Clock Hours

3. Verifying Your NCSA Account Balance

NCSA's usage Command

Entering usage with no options displays cumulative information about the usage of all your allocations on all applicable NCSA machines. For example:

% usage
Proj  Mach   Login  Usage Status  P_alloc  P_usage  P_expire  Name
aad    abe   lahti 91.03  Active   100000   713.72  06/30/08  Lahti, Tracy
non  cobalt  lahti  0.02  Active    50000    94.93  12/31/08  Lahti, Tracy

If the project name is specified using the -p option, information is returned for all users of that project on all applicable machines. The data displayed by usage is normally updated once each day, so SUs accrued by jobs on a given day will be reflected in usage the next day.

For a complete description of the usage options, enter man usage.

4. Setting Projects for Charging

Most users have only one project, but if you have more than one, you can charge to various projects within a logon session. You will need to provide your project serial number (PSN). You do not need to define a default project unless you have multiple projects.

Setting a Default Project

You can define (or change) a default project with the 'defacct' command. After a default project is set, you will no longer be prompted to choose one of your projects during the login process.

Enter 'defacct' at the prompt to set your default.
Enter 'none' at the prompt to unset a default project, and enter a carriage return to leave your default project unchanged.

See the defacct man page for more information.

The 'batch_accts' command lists all your accounts on the current system.

IMPORTANT: If you have a default project set, batch jobs will automatically be charged to the default project at the time that the job is submitted unless you charge the batch job to a specific project (see below).

Charging to Projects in a Batch Job

You can also charge batch jobs to a specific project (PSN) as follows:

SGI Altix (cobalt): use the -A option in the PBS qsub command in your script.
Intel 64 Linux Cluster (abe): use the -A option in the PBS qsub command in your script.

5. Getting Refunds

NCSA considers a request for a refund for service units when one of the following is true:

Output was lost because of a system crash or hardware failure.
A bug in the system software caused incorrect output.
NCSA staff gave misleading advice, causing incorrect output .

Refund requests are denied when one of the following is true:

Fewer than 50 SUs were consumed (academic users).
The request was made more than two weeks after the charge.
No charges were recorded for the job in question (e.g., the system crashed before a job finished; so the CPU usage was not recorded in the accounting file).
Output was lost because the job did not use the batch scratch file system.

Submit the following information to NCSA Consulting Services to request a refund:

User ID
Machine name
Batch Job ID
Reason for the request
Date the job finished

The list above shows the minimum information required. Additional information that may be requested includes error messages or a copy of your batch script. In such cases, you will be contacted by a member of the consulting staff who will let you know what additional information is needed to review your request.

6. Terminating, Renewing, and Extending

Your Account

Academic accounts on NCSA's production machines are deleted when they either use up the allocation or reach the project's expiry date, whichever occurs first. (See the section Verifying Your Account Balance for information on your allocation.) Academic users are notified automatically via email to their account on the affected system when

80% of allocation is used
90% of allocation is used
3 months to expiration of the project
1 month to expiration of the project

Note: Industrial user accounts do not expire automatically.

Users have restricted access to their account for a one week period after the account is terminated. You cannot login, but have FTP access via a Kerberized FTP client to retrieve home directory files, etc. if you haven't already done so. For information on installing the Kerberos clients, please see NCSA's Security page.

Users' UniTree accounts are active for a period of 4 months in read-only mode after your last NCSA production machine account is deleted. This means that you can retrieve existing files from UniTree, but cannot save any new files. You need to use the Kerberized FTP client to access UniTree.

Project Renewals and Extensions

If you have an existing start-up (DAC) allocation, you can have the expiration dates extended, but you cannot a request for more service units. To request an extension, submit the Extension Request Form available at the Partnerships Online Proposal System (POPS) page. Please make the request at least two weeks prior to the project's deactivation date. Your request will be reviewed prior to deactivation, and you will be contacted via e-mail with the extension decision.

Managing Your NCSA Allocation Account