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Resource Accounting

Contents

Overview

This document helps explain the accounting system and provides examples of how to use the accounting software to monitor and manage allocations. It is not intended as a complete reference document for the accounting system.

Resource Allocation

ARSC allocates computer resources to projects rather than to individuals. Each project has a designated principal investigator (PI) who is in charge of the research project. The PI approves user access to the project. All users have equal access to the available resources.

ARSC resources are allocated in CPU hours for each platform. Allocations are for the current fiscal year (1 October - 30 September). If your project has or will run out of allocation, please contact User Support about applying for additional allocation of CPU hours.

Estimating Your Allocation Request In CPU Hours

To obtain the initial estimates of the CPU hours, most users need to run sample jobs. ARSC provides "Start Up" accounts that have limited allocation for code testing, porting and debugging. "Start Up" accounts are for users needing to make preliminary estimates of their resource requirements.

Managing Your Resources

Resource accounting is applicable only to iceberg (IBM P6x) and midnight (Sun Opteron Cluster). Iceberg and midnight are AK6 and AK8 in pIE, respectively. Utilization on ARSC's Linux workstations and other systems is not currently tracked. The show_usage command is available to help you track the utilization for your project(s). The show_usage utility is located in /usr/local/bin on iceberg and midnight.

show_usage

iceberg1 % show_usage -h
show_usage [-h] [-s]
   -h show this help dialog

   -s shows project information for all available systems.
      Currently limited to iceberg.

Sample Use:

     iceberg2 % show_usage

               ARSC - Subproject Usage Information (in CPU Hours)
                        As of 13:00:01 hours ADT 24 Jul 2006
             For Fiscal Year 2006 (01 October 2005 - 30 September 2006)
                     Percentage of Fiscal Year Remaining: 18.90%

                             Hours      Hours      Hours      Percent  Background
     System     Subproject     Allocated  Used       Remaining  Remaining Hours Used
     ========== ============== ========== ========== ========== ========= ==========
     iceberg    projectA        100000.00   73262.50   26737.50    26.74%       0.00
     iceberg    projectB         10000.00       0.80    9999.20    99.99%       0.00

Project utilization for all allocated systems can be obtained by using show_usage with the -s option as in show_usage -s.


     iceberg2 % show_usage -s

               ARSC - Subproject Usage Information (in CPU Hours)
                        As of 13:00:01 hours ADT 24 Jul 2006
             For Fiscal Year 2006 (01 October 2005 - 30 September 2006)
                     Percentage of Fiscal Year Remaining: 18.90%

                             Hours      Hours      Hours      Percent  Background
     System     Subproject     Allocated  Used       Remaining  Remaining Hours Used
     ========== ============== ========== ========== ========== ========= ==========
     iceberg    projectA        100000.00   73262.50   26737.50    26.74%       0.00
     iceberg    projectB         10000.00       0.80    9999.20    99.99%       0.00

The PI for a project may request a more thourough utilization report by contacting User Support.

Instructions for Users in Multiple Projects

Allocations on iceberg and midnight are currently controlled via UNIX groups. Below are instructions for selecting the project allocation to charge a job against.

The groups command shows which groups a user is in. This should include any projects of which the user is a member.

For example:
iceberg2 1% groups
projecta projectb

The default project for this user is "projecta". Users in more than one project can select an alternate project to charge against their allocation by using LoadLeveler or PBS options. By default, LoadLeveler and PBS charge CPU time to the user's primary group. Users in a single project do not need to specify a project in their LoadLeveler or PBS scripts. In the above example, use would be charged to "projecta" by default, but could be charged to "projectb" by using the options described below in their LoadLeveler or PBS scripts:

On iceberg, using LoadLeveler, for example:

# @ account_no = projectb

On midnight, using PBS, for example:

#PBS -W group_list=projectb

More Information

 

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