Allocation Year Rollover: 2016 to 2017

Note: Allocation Year 2016 (AY16) ends at 23:59:59 on Monday, January 9, 2017. AY17 runs from Tuesday, January 10, 2017 through Monday, January 08, 2018.

Below are major changes that will go into effect with the beginning of AY17 on Tuesday, January 10, 2017. All times listed are PST.

Scheduled System and Service Downtimes

There will be no computational systems disruptions during the allocation year rollover and jobs will run uninterrupted. No service downtimes are expected, except that the NIM accounting system will be unavailable for about 30 minutes around midnight on January 9.

Charging Across AY Boundary

All batch jobs will continue running during the rollover. Time accrued before midnight will be charged to AY16 repos; time accrued after midnight will be charged to AY17 repos. Running batch jobs that are associated with non-continuing repositories will have the AY17 component of their usage charged to a NERSC AY17 overhead repository. Queued ("idle") jobs associated with non-continuing repositories will fail upon startup in AY17.

Premium QOS Temporarily Disabled from January 2

Beginning from Jan 2, 2017, premium QOS jobs on Edison and Cori will have the same priority as normal QOS jobs. The premium QOS will be available again when the new allocation year starts.  

AY17 Allocation Awards

The AY17 allocation award letters were e-mailed to project PIs on December 11. The awards are listed on the allocation awards web page. On January 10, the new allocations of CPU time and mass storage will replace those from AY16. Unused allocations do not carry over into the new allocation year, except for ALCC projects. (ALCC projects should see the remainder of their 2016/17 ALCC awards reflected in their NERSC 2017 allocation. 2016/17 ALCC time expires on June 30, 2017.)

Accurate Information Requires Web Refreshing

Sessions that are active in the NIM web interface (nim.nersc.gov) at 00:01 PST on January 10, must be refreshed to display accurate information. Sessions can be refreshed by logging out and then logging back in. Likewise, for account information displayed on the main NERSC web site, you must refresh your session.

New Repositories

When a new repository is created, its initial membership consists of the PI and any PI Proxies that were designated in the ERCAP proposal. The PI and/or Proxies may add other users to the repository after the new AY starts on January 10th and the repository has been activated. Instructions for adding users to repositories can be found in the "NIM User's Guide for PIs". In addition, users may now add themselves to repositories; these user initiated additions must then be approved by the PI or by a Proxy.  See How to Get a NERSC Account. Users should not request accounts in new repositories until after the new AY starts.

Account Creation/Validation Moratorium

No user accounts will be created after Tuesday, January 3 at noon until Tuesday, January 10 at 08:00. 

Discontinued Users

Effective January 10, a user will be considered "discontinued" if that user is not associated with an active AY17 repository. (Note: It is possible for a PI or repository manager to drop users from continuing repositories.)

All discontinued users will have limited login access to their authorized systems until February 10, 2017. Such users will be unable to submit batch jobs, but will be able to perform limited interactive tasks. The intent of this access is to allow discontinued users the ability to "clean up", e.g., transfer files back to their home institution.

All discontinued users will continue to have write access to HPSS until February 10, and then read-only and delete access for six months (until August 10, 2017). 

Startup Requests

Startup awards are small allocations made throughout the allocation year.  Startup requests for AY2016 are no longer being accepted.