Scope

The content of this page is of interest for any principal investigators (PI) and persons of contact (PC) of SuperMUC-NG projects. Here you find explanatory/additional information to both the confirmation letter and the the initial project information letter which you received from LRZ via GCS-JARDS after approval of your project.

Project Confirmation Letter – predominantly for Large-Scale Projects

Assignment of a GCS Mentor to your Project

Background

In addition to the operation of SuperMUC-NG, LRZ and the Gauss Centre for Supercomputing (GCS) offer enhanced support by providing a dedicated mentor for your Gauss project. Mentoring addresses the needs of both, users and the GCS centres.

The GCS Mentor ...

acts as a permanent point of contact and is assigned to each large-scale project.
has a detailed understanding of the user’s project, its history, and resource consumption, as well as the project’s associated challenges.
should assist the user in the long-term needs for achieving the scientific goals.
coordinates communication between users and support staff, and also coordinates efforts in software, performance and IO optimization, long-term data management and visualization.
can also coordinate the usage of dedicated resources (block operation, reservation of resources).

The Benefit

The user profits from a more efficient and personalized support structure for his or her project while the three GCS centres benefit from more efficient use of valuable HPC resources.

Please consult the GCS website for more information: https://www.gauss-centre.eu/for-users/user-services-and-support/.

This is a complementary service while the LRZ Servicedesk (https://doku.lrz.de/display/PUBLIC/Servicedesk+for+SuperMUC-NG) is still the point of contact for immediate issues or service requests concerning the HPC systems.

I have received the name of my mentor. How to proceed?

Your mentor will contact you soon to enquire your project's requirements and status.

Applicability of Mentoring

Requirement for assignment of a mentor

Your project is considered to be a GCS large-scale project

or

your project is considered to be a GCS regular project (for example after an application within the scope of a GCS large-scale call). However, on the road of becoming a GCS large-scale project, your project will receive additional support through participation in the mentoring program.

Initial Project Information Letter

General information / useful links

General
https://jards.gauss-centre.eu/project	Access project information. Upload reports and information of publications related to your project.
https://www.gauss-centre.eu/for-users/hpc-access	Please note the reporting obligations for accepted regular and Large-Scale Projects.
SuperMUC-NG	SuperMUC-NG documentation
https://servicedesk.lrz.de/	Please, contact LRZ servicedesk to report incidents, other technical problems and service requests. Please, do not reply to the initial project e-mail.
Large-scale projects only
Contact your mentor	Do you have any question, which does not fit into a service request or incident ticket? Please contact your mentor!

Project Activation Process

The project activation includes the registration of user IDs on SuperMUC-NG in the following groups, which are indexed by the according suffix:

permission to use compute ressources: PROJECT_ID-c,
creation of directories on LRZ file system: PROJECT_ID-d.

Every day at 8 o’clock the databases are updated by carrying out the provisioning process.

Please consider: The user IDs of your project do not appear in your project view of the LRZ IDM Portal. All user IDs are listed within the general SuperMUC-NG project "hpcusers". You are not project manager of "hpcusers". The user IDs can be found in the new IDM portal for project groups https://idmportal2.sim.lrz.de/ .

User Account Activation Process

	Role	Action
Step 1	I am a new user and want to get an account within a particular compute project. a member of an existing project on SuperMUC-NG, but want to get an account in another project on SuperMUC-NG.	Please contact your master user or the principal investigator (PI) or person of contact (PC) of your project.
Step 2	master user (PI/PC)	Please open a service request ticket to add/activate new members within your project. You will receive the user ID and the activation notification for this ID in the relevant project via this ticket. Please provide this information to the user. The user ID of existing users will not change.
Step 3	master user (PI/PC)	Important: Both the access to SuperMUC-NG and the data transfer to/from SuperMUC-NG via Globus Online require a static and public IP address of the computer which directly accesses the login nodes of the supercomputer (user's workstation, gateway etc.)! Please open another service request ticket to activate this IP address. You will receive a notification about the activation via this ticket.
Step 4	user	Steps to access the supercomputer: Get your initial password: Please call the password reset function of the LRZ IDM Portal. You will need your new user ID to complete the procedure. You need to accept the export control regulations (see below). Setup your Two-Factor-Authentication (2FA). Please refer to https://doku.lrz.de/two-factor-authentication-on-supermuc-ng-10746550.html Login to SuperMUC-NG: After doing the password reset, the automatic file system provision procedure will create your HOME and WORK directories at 8 o'clock the next day. Please do not login before that time. You may use the waiting time to become familiar with Access and Login to SuperMUC-NG. Note: If your user ID was activated within the scope of another project on SuperMUC-NG, you need to wait approximately one hour after doing the password reset.

Local Project ID

You will need the local project ID for both communication with LRZ and for administrative actions within your project by utilizing the service-request templates at LRZ:

For details please visit Access and Login to SuperMUC-NG.

Password Reset and Export Control Regulations

In case of doing a password reset, the user has to comply with the export control regulations. Additionally, the master user (PI and/or PC) will be asked to comply with those regulations, too. Please visit the section "Richtlinien im HPC-Bereich" at https://www.lrz.de/wir/regelwerk/ to get explanatory information on that topic and usage conditions with respect to the supercomputer at LRZ.

Did you encounter problems with password reset or do you have other technical problems? Please open a ticket via LRZ Servicedesk.

Two-Factor-Authentication (2FA)

In order to improve the security of SuperMUC-NG, LRZ has changed the authentication procedure on all login nodes to two-factor authentication (2FA).

Associated Project Partners

Does your project application list associated project partners, who will also work on the supercomputer in terms of consuming compute time?

If so, then we kindly ask you to send a service request in order to apply for according user IDs.

LRZ distinguishes between project partners and project members.

Archive (Data Science Archive, DSA) Request

Please carefully read the following paragraphs, if you have requested an archive storage in your GCS-JARDS application (step "Data management LRZ" → "Archive"). Due to the installation of the new Data Science Archive (DSA), you have to repeat your request via the LRZ servicedesk as the first step. In this request, please specify again the Archive total size and the total Archive file number.

After submitting the DSA service request, the LRZ configures a DSA container for your project. You will then receive a welcome e-mail from the DSSWeb system ("You have been added as data curator for project ..."). After receiving this e-mail, please continue with the following steps:

To manage your archive (DSA), please use the DSSWeb portal: https://dssweb.dss.lrz.de
Please note, the access to the DSSWeb portal is only available via a VPN connection.
To set up the VPN client and the VPN connection, please follow these instructions: https://doku.lrz.de/display/PUBLIC/VPN-Clientsoftware (only in German).
To establish the VPN connection and login to DSSWeb, use your LRZ master user (PI/PC) user ID (see section "Account Activation Process" above).

What do you have to do after the login to DSSWeb?

After login in https://dssweb.dss.lrz.de using your master user (PI/PC) user ID, you are on the DSSWeb home page (Project Overview).
Select your project.
Select "DSS Containers".
Create a new container ("New DSS Container").
Please set on the page "Create new DSS Container for Project":
- Pool: DSA
- Max Size (GB): desired size
- Max Files: desired number (one file per GB is in general an appropriate value)
- The remaining settings remain unchanged (even "Globe sharing" is not yet available).
After creation you have to wait until 6 am the following day. Then the provisioning will take place.
Then you and your project colleages can log in to the SuperMUC-NG login nodes (please without VPN) and display the path to your DSA. To do this, use the command "dssusrinfo all".

High Performance File System Usage (WORK/SCRATCH)

Consider reasonable work flows on and usage of the large high-bandwidth file systems! (Documentation)