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Argonne Leadership Computing Facility

Starting Your ALCF Award

The following guide is for PIs and Proxies to get insight into managing projects and teams for ALCF awards. Please submit for questions or trouble tickets to support@alcf.anl.gov.

Get Started with ALCF’s Systems

To get started using our resources, please visit: Connect & Login

We also encourage you to take full advantage of ALCF's training programs and user services. Some useful introductory materials and videos are listed below:

Project Terminology

Before your project begins, you will receive an email with the following project information:

  • Project Short Name: The assigned, shortened name for your project. This will be the name that you’ll use to access your project on the systems.
  • Project Proxies: Project members designated by PIs that are authorized to add or renew project members on your behalf.
  • Allocation System(s) and Allocation Amount: The approved system(s) and amount of your award in node hours.
  • Approved Quota: The approved amount of disk space for your project directory.
  • File System: The file system where your project directory will reside. For information on the Eagle file system, see Storage and Networking.
  • Assigned Catalyst: INCITE projects will have ALCF staff members that are assigned to the projects who are available to assist the team throughout the duration of the INCITE allocation.
  • Allocation Start Date: The start date of your award.
  • Allocation End Date: The end date of your award.

Account Setup

If you do not have an ALCF account: You will need to request one at https://my.alcf.anl.gov/accounts/#/accountRequest. When prompted for project name, please select the project short name you were given in your award email from support@alcf.anl.gov.

If you have an active ALCF account: Submit a request to join the newly awarded project at https://my.alcf.anl.gov/.

Information for Foreign National Access

The U.S. Department of Energy has guidelines and requirements for foreign nationals who access its facilities and sites. This guidance is issued in DOE Order 142.3, which is part of Argonne's contract; therefore, all foreign nationals (non-U.S. Citizens) must obtain authorization prior to using ALCF resources.

If you are a foreign national and do not have current authorization credentials, you are required to submit a ANL-593 (Foreign National Access Request) form. It is critical that identity documentation requests sent by ALCF staff are completed as early as possible to facilitate timely processing for your account approval.

User Agreement for INCITE, ALCC, and ADSP

Note: This does not apply to Director's Discretionary awards.

Insitution Master Agreement for INCITE, ALCC, and ADSP

If you are not an employee of Argonne National Laboratory, a user agreement must be signed by your home institution to perform research at Argonne’s user facilities. This policy applies to every member of the project team who will be conducting research on ALCF resources.

A list of home institutions that have master agreements in place is located on this webpage: https://www.aps.anl.gov/Users-Information/Legal-Financial/Argonne-User-Facility-Agreements

ALCF User Agreement for INCITE, ALCC, and ADSP

Note: This does not apply to Director's Discretionary awards.

Every project team member who requests an ALCF account must sign and return an acknowledgment form, stating that they agree to the terms in the user agreement.

The form is located at: https://www.alcf.anl.gov/files/Acknowledgement_Form.pdf. Please print, sign, scan and email it to accounts@alcf.anl.gov.

Managing Project Team Membership

As a PI, you can add members to your project. You can assign proxies who are project members authorized to add or renew project members on your behalf.

A project PI or proxy has the authority to:

  • Approve and renew accounts
  • Add and delete users to/from the project
  • Approve Foreign Assignment/Visit Request form renewals for project members who are foreign nationals

During your project setup, the ALCF Support Team will request the following information to establish your project members:

  • The names, email addresses, and/or ALCF usernames (if already existing) of up to two proxies and all project members.

About Project and UNIX Group Membership

All project members have the ability to run jobs against your allocation. There is no limit to the number of project members you may authorize. Project members are automatically added to the project UNIX group giving them the ability to write to the project directory and to access project data. When a project member is added or removed from a project, this automatically be reflected in the project UNIX group membership.

Adding Project Members

The PI or a proxy must approve each team member to access ALCF resources and run jobs on their project. PI/proxies can respond to emails from ALCF for account access approval with a "yes" or "no".

PI/proxies with active ALCF accounts can also approve new account requests, project membership requests, account reactivation requests, add existing active ALCF users to the project by logging into the ALCF Account and Project Management application.

Note: If PI/proxies need to request an ALCF account, see the section below for instructions on "how to apply" for an account.

Accounts and Access for your Project Members

All project members will need an ALCF user account to access project data and to run jobs on ALCF systems.

Members that do not have an ALCF account should request one at: https://my.alcf.anl.gov/accounts/#/accountRequest. When prompted for project name, they should select your project short name.

Members with ALCF accounts that are no longer active should submit a reactivation request here: https://my.alcf.anl.gov/accounts/#/accountReactivate. When prompted for project name, they should select your project short name.

Members with active ALCF accounts but have not been added to your project should submit a request to join your project by going to this page: https://my.alcf.anl.gov/. They should search for your project and click the "Request Membership" button for that project.

Moving Your Data

We encourage you to use Globus to move your project data to your ALCF project directory before your allocation begins. For details, see Using Globus.

Project Status Reports for INCITE, ALCC, and ADSP

Note: PIs that are awarded a Director's Discretionary will not receive weekly status project reports.

Shortly after your allocation begins, we will begin sending you a weekly project status report via support@alcf.anl.gov to keep you informed or your award progress.

Look for an email from us with the subject line: ALCF [ALLOCATION PROGRAM] Project Status Report for [PROJECT SHORT NAME]

Reporting Requirements for INCITE, ALCC, and ADSP

Note: PIs that are awarded a Director's Discretionary allocations are not required to submit project reports.

If you receieved INCITE, ALCC, or ADSP allocation award, quarterly reporting is required to keep DOE informed of progress related to your allocation.

The ALCF will send you a report template at the end of each quarter. Please complete the report promptly and submit it via email to support@alcf.anl.gov. For more information see the Quarterly Report webpage.

Policies

Pullback Policy

Please be aware that we will periodically monitor, and could potentially adjust, your project allocation if a large portion of it goes unused. You may view: Pullback Policy

Allocation Overburn Policy

Please see this page for overburn/overuse eligibility for INCITE projects that have exhausted their allocation in the first 11 months of its allocation year: Allocation Overburn

Acknowledgment In Publications

Please follow the guidelines provided on the ALCF Acknowledgement Policy page to properly acknowledge the use of ALCF resources in all of your publications, both online and print.

Facility Policies

Facility policies have been established to provide consistent and reliable services. Please read about our [ALCF Facility Policies] (../policies/facility-policies.md).

Useful Allocation and Quota Commands

We have an allocation management tool called sbank, and below are a few helpful sbank commands.

  • myprojectquotas: log into Polaris and type this command to view the project directory quotas for all your projects
  • myquota: log into Polaris and type this command to view your home directory quota

You can use the following command to check your project balance on Polaris: - sbank-list-allocations -p -r

For more command examples and details, see sbank.

How Can We Help?

We can also help resolve any issues or needs that may be delaying the start of your scientific campaign. - Are you in need of high-throughput software? - Are you having difficulty compiling your application? - Does your code have limited restart capabilities?

If your project allocation usage is being held back for reasons due to one of our systems, please contact us for assistance by emailing support@alcf.anl.gov.