SCF Principal Investigators Information

Table of contents

• Overview
• Basic project maintenance
• Allocations and accounting
• Project disk space

Overview 

If you have not yet applied for a new project and are looking into doing so, please also read this document for prospective principal investigators. All users of our systems must be a member of a research project. The new project application is here.

The Boston University Scientific Computing Facilities (SCF) consist of a collection of high-performance computers, high-speed networks, and advanced visualization facilities. These facilities are managed by the Scientific Computing and Visualization (SCV) group of the Office of Information Technology (OIT) in collaboration with the Center for Computational Science (CCS) and are offered free of charge.

A full description of the SCF facilities is available at http://scv.bu.edu/computation/. Your SCF login name and password will allow you access to most of these facilities. Information on using these facilities is available at http://scv.bu.edu/accounts/user-information.html.

As a Principal Investigator on a project, certain special considerations beyond those for users apply to you which this document describes.

Basic Project Maintenance 

As a Principal Investigator, it is your responsibility to keep track of and maintain your project. This is done via web pages we have set up for each project. These pages are accessible at http://scv.bu.edu/accounts/ and will allow you to:

1. Add, delete, or alter the status of users on your project.
2. Request additional processor time or project disk space.
3. Renew your project annually (required).
4. Look at recent summaries of usage on your projects.
5. Submit a request to start a new project.

All of the above actions except the last one will require you to enter your SCF login id (i.e. Twister/Cootie user name) and password. Access to information on your project is limited to you (and your Administrative Contact if you have one). Please note that although the password required to access the web forms is the same as your password to log in to the machines, it is only updated twice daily so if you change your password on the machines, you will need to wait a while before accessing the web pages for your projects using the new password.

On a new project where you are also getting a new account it may take a day or so after your account is set up and you have set your password for this information to propagate to the web pages such that you can access your project's information.

Allocations and Accounting

Although there are no monetary charges for use of our facilities, all projects are given a specific annual usage allocation, given in terms of "service units" (SUs). This allocation must be renewed (and adjusted if appropriate) annually. On October 1, 2003 we renormalized our SUs so that 1 SU corresponded to 1 processor hour on the now retired IBM p690. On the IBM p655 system, you will be charged 0.85 SUs for use of 1 processor hour. Processor hours on the Katana Cluster 2.6 GHz AMD Opteron 2218HE blades are also charged at the rate of 1.0 SUs per hour, while the slightly slower 2.4 GHz AMD Opteron 2216HE blades are charged 0.9 SUs per CPU hour. On the faster 3.0 GHz Intel Xeon E5450 blades in the Cluster, the charge rate is 1.5 SUs per hour. Each processor hour used on the older Linux cluster is charged 0.3 SUs - given the processor speeds, the two Linux clusters are the most efficient use of your SUs as long as they meet your needs. Each processor hour (counted by wall clock time) used on the IBM BlueGene is charged 0.25 SUs - this system will generally only make sense to use if your code scales well to at least 256 processors. Projects which exceed their allocation will be prohibited from running additional jobs. It is your responsibility as a Principal Investigator to monitor your project's usage and to request an appropriate allocation of time/SUs. Information on accounts and allocations may also be found on the Account Management web pages at http://scv.bu.edu/accounts/.

Allocations

The default allocation is a combined 590 SUs. You can request a larger allocation during your annual project renewal or at other times by submitting a Request for Additional Processor Allocation, which can be found by following the pointers on the project management Web pages. Large allocation requests are reviewed by the SCF Allocation Committee and generally require approximately four weeks for a decision. All projects must be renewed annually (or at the project's end date; whichever is sooner) at which time the project's SU allocation is reset to the new year's amount. Left-over SUs from the prior year do not carry over to the new year.

Reporting

Each month we will send you a summary of usage and remaining allocations for each of your projects. Individual researchers on your projects will be sent a summary of their own usage for each project they are on. Individuals may also review the details of their recent usage and monthly summary information using the password protected Web pages which may be found under the project management Web pages.

Project Disk Space 

You may also request more permanent disk space on either the /project file system or the /projectnb file system for your projects. This space is intended for use by projects which need large quantities of shared space to work in. The difference between the two file systems is that /project is backed up nightly while /projectnb is not backed up at all. More information is available on the Project Disk Space Web page.

Queries regarding any information in this document should be directed to scfacct@bu.edu.