Policies¶

Running Jobs on Login Node¶

Running jobs/tasks on the login node is not permitted. When the RC admin team notices this occurring, the processes will be killed immediately to ensure system stability. If you are having trouble submitting jobs through the scheduler, please follow instructions on Getting Help and we would he happy to help.

Data storage¶

Current storage limits are specific to each cluster and directories (Home and Scratch). For information about where these directories are located and storage quotas please visit the Disk Storage page.

Getting Software Installed On the Cluster¶

Software needed on the cluster for research work can be installed at user requests. However, we initially recommend that software, scripts, and programming libraries be installed locally in user directories as opposed to system-wide. This is generally because system-wide installs of software/libraries not supported directly by Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) may get broken during system-wide updates. If the software/library has a large enough appeals (multiple users/multiple research teams) we can and will assist in installing a system-wide version. If assistance is needed for installing software/libraries locally in your user directory please follow instructions at Getting Help, the WVU-RC team we will gladly assist.

User Priority for Job Submission¶

Depending on what hostname your submitting jobs on, different priority defaults are assigned to your job submission. On Mountaineer priority for queues are set by fair share queueing. This means that user priority is assigned based on a combination of the size of the job and how much system resources you have used during the given week, with higher priority assigned to larger jobs and/or user jobs that have used less system resources in the week. On Spruce knob, the research team nodes are first come first serve priority, with jobs submitted before other jobs having higher priority. For specifications associated with the standby queue and community node queues on Spruce Knob, please see the Spruce Knob Queue page. If you would like to have different priority settings for your research teams queue please follow instructions at Getting Help for the WVU-RC team attend your request.

Database Management on Clusters¶

The current set-up for the HPC clusters is for common HPC use. This means that the compute nodes where set-up with the idea that data will be transferred to the system, computed, and then transferred off. Database management systems are not currently supported on the cluster because the compute nodes where never initially set-up to handle the data storage required. However, if your research team has a need for Managed Database systems that have large storage needs with a database management system back-end (i.e. MySQL, Oracle, etc) please Getting Help the RC HPC team and we can come up with solutions to handle these data requests.

X11 Forwarding - Running visualization software¶

Non compute intensive processes for visualization purposes can be run on the login node. These processes include “could” gnuplot, R and Matlab. However, if your visualization job requires computing data before producing graphs and figures, it is best to run these jobs through the scheduler in batch mode. Compute intensive jobs, visualization or not, are not permitted to run on the head-node. If you have any questions about the best way to accomplish your computing goal, please follow instructions on Getting Help through the help desk and we will provide any assistance needed to fulfill your requirements.