Managing Your Allocation and Your Users

Managing Your Users

For information on managing your users see the Iris Guide for PIs and Project Managers. This guide explains how to check account usage, how to add and delete users from your project account (repo), how to change users' quotas and user contact information.

Requesting a Supplemental Award

If your project runs out of time the PI or PI Proxy may request additional time by submitting the Computing Time Increase Request form (requires login). For further details review this page.

What happens if a project or user balance is negative

Accounting information is reconciled once daily (in the early morning, Pacific Time). At this time actions are taken if a project repo or user balance is negative.  If a project (repo) runs out of time (or Storage Quota) all login names which are not associated with another active project are restricted:

• On computational machines restricted users are able to log in and use the login nodes. Batch jobs are subject to the following conditions:
  • If the project's balance is zero or negative, the user will be able to submit jobs to the low-priority "overrun" queue only.
  • If the project's balance is positive, but the user balance is zero or negative, the user will not be allowed to submit batch jobs.
• For HPSS restricted users are able to read data from HPSS and delete files but cannot write any data to HPSS.

Users that are associated with more than one project (for a given resource -- Compute or HPSS) are checked to see if the user has a positive balance in any of their other projects (for that resource). If they do have a positive balance in some project (for that resource) they will not be restricted and the following will happen:

• On computational machines the user will not be able to charge to the restricted project (but can submit low-priority Overrun jobs if desired). If the restricted project had been the user's default project, the user can change their default project through the Iris interface, or specify a different project with sufficient allocation when submitting a job with the -A flag in Slurm.
• For HPSS, user project percents are not adjusted when a balance goes negative. Users control their HPSS project percents (these percents tell Iris how to distribute HPSS user charges to the user's HPSS projects), although a PI or Project Manger can ask the user to adjust them. For more information see HPSS Charging.

The PI and project managers receive an email notifying them that the project balance is negative. They should submit the appropriate request for the resource the project needs for the rest of the allocation year. For project Storage quotas in HPSS or on CFS, the PI or project manager should submit a Disk Quota Increase request through the NERSC HelpDesk website. (Individual project members can submit their own scratch quota increase requests using the same form.)

If and when the project receives additional time (or Storage quota), any users that have been restricted will be unrestricted within two hours of the update.

Likewise, when a user goes over their individual user quota in a given project, that user is restricted if they have no other project to charge to. A PI or Project Manager can change the user's quota. See the Iris Guide for PIs and Project Managers for instructions for changing user quotas.

User Deletion Process

When a user is removed from a computational system

When a user is removed from one of the NERSC computational systems (but still remains authorized to use other NERSC resources) the following happens:

1. The user is placed in Limited status on the system and is notified by email about the removal process. The user retains the Limited status for one month. While in Limited status the user can still login to the system but cannot submit batch jobs or run long interactive jobs. While in Limited status the user is responsible for:
   • Deleting files that are no longer needed.
   • Moving personal files (not needed by any NERSC project) to their home site, to HPSS, or to some other NERSC computational system where the user is still active.
   • Ensuring that files needed by any project of which they have been a member are retained by the project.
2. After one month in Limited status the user is Disabled (can no longer login) and retains the Disabled Status for at least five months. During this time the user can be easily re-activated.
3. After five months of Disabled status the user's permanent files are eligible to be archived to HPSS, after which the username may be removed from the system.

When a user is removed from a project

PIs and Project Managers decide when a user should be removed from a project. Users who are removed from a project receive an email to that effect. If the user is still a member of other projects, the user is simply removed from the departed project repositories (and can no longer charge to them) but otherwise remains active at NERSC.

When a user is removed from their last project at NERSC the following happens:

1. The user goes through the user deletion process on each computational system for which they have an account. The user remains active on HPSS during the month of limited status on the computational systems.
2. After one month the user is placed in Limited Status on HPSS and has read/delete access there. The user retains Limited status on HPSS for 5 months. While in Limited status the user is responsible for:
   • Deleting files that are no longer needed.
   • Moving personal files (not needed by any NERSC project) to their home site.
   • Ensuring that files needed by any project of which they have been a member are retained by the project.
3. After 5 months of Limited Status on HPSS the user is disabled on HPSS. The user's files are now eligible to be moved to the HPSS crpt where they will remain for at least 18 months before being deleted. This step has not yet been implemented.