1. Center for Research Computing Data
  2. Prospective Users
  3. HPC Policies

HPC Policies

Login node

While working on the login node, only run any application interactively for development or testing purposes. We impose a combined limit on the use of the login node resource usage, and any process exceeded 30% of available CPUs or memory will be killed after 30 min of the run time. If more extended interactive tests are necessary, please request an interactive batch system job.

Batch system

All compute (a.k.a "worker") nodes are managed via the PBS batch system. The batch system allows reserve a part of cluster nodes to run a particular application (a job). The more resources job requires the larger cost of a user mistake:

  • always submit several short test jobs before long massive production runs.

Any production jobs should be submitted via the batch system.

Disk space

The accessible disk space is configured to be used as described below -

  • /home/$USER - the user's home area, the initial quota is 25GB. Please keep the smaller files here (documents, configuration scripts, code archives). To obtain information about the disk space usage, use the "quota" command from the login node.
  • /data1/$PROJECT/$USER and/or  /data2/$PROJECT/$USER at Gaea and /lstr/sahara/$PROJECT/$USER at Metis -- the user's project areas to store input and output (potentially large) datasets required or produced via batch jobs. The quota is set via projects needs; please discuss with us the required disk space.

Backup

We only keep a previous day snapshot of /home areas at Metis and Gaea clusters. We strongly encourage users to use a personal GIT system for any code development and do frequent backups of important data to remote locations.

Acknowledgment policy

Please use the statement below to acknowledge the use of the Center’s resources in all public presentations of your work (e.g., published works, presentations including student class presentations, theses, and dissertations, posters, etc.):

This work used resources of the Center for Research Computing and Data at Northern Illinois University.

Additional policies are under consideration and will be added in due time.

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