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 login node resource usage: any process that exceeds 30% of available CPUs or memory will be killed after 30 minutes of runtime. 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 PBSpro batch system. The batch system allows reserving a part of the cluster nodes to run a particular application (a job). The more resources a job requires, the higher the 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/$USER - the user's home area, the initial quota is 35GB. Please keep the smaller files here (documents, configuration scripts, code archives). To obtain information about the disk space usage, use the "quota" command from the login node.
  • /lstr/sahara/$PROJECT/$USER at Metis -- the project areas to store input and output (potentially large) datasets required or produced via batch jobs. The quota is set based on the project's needs; please discuss the required disk space with us.

Backups

Backups are unavailable, but we maintain previous-day snapshots of the /home and /lstr filesystems.  Snapshots are not backups: the recovery chances for accidentally deleted files are never 100%, and all deleted files will be gone within a 24-hour window.  The best chance of recovering accidentally deleted files is to immediately check the /nfs/ihfs/home_yesterday and/or /nfs/ibkp/metis_lstr_yesterday folders at metis.

We strongly encourage users to use a personal Git system for code development and perform 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, 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.