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Get an Account

In order to use the ULHPC facilities, you need to have a user account with an associated user login name (also called username) placed under an account hierarchy.

Conditions of acceptance

Acceptable Use Policy (AUP)

There are a number of policies which apply to ULHPC users.

UL HPC Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) [pdf]

Important

All users of UL HPC resources and PIs must abide by the UL HPC Acceptable Use Policy (AUP). You should read and keep a signed copy of this document before using the facility.

Access and/or usage of any ULHPC system assumes the tacit acknowledgement to this policy.

Remember that you are expected to acknowledge ULHPC in your publications. See Acceptable Use Policy for more details.

ULHPC Platforms are meant ONLY for R&D!

The ULHPC facility is made for Research and Development and it is NOT a full production computing center -- for such needs, consider using the National HPC center.

In particular, we cannot make any guarantees of cluster availability or timely job completion even if we target a minimum compute node availability above 95% which is typically met - for instance, past KPI statistics in 2019 report a computing node availability above 97%.

Resource allocation policies

ULHPC Usage Charging and Resource allocation policy

UL internal R&D and training

ULHPC resources are free of charge for UL staff for their internal work and training activities. Principal Investigators (PI) will nevertheless receive on a regular basis a usage report of their team activities on the UL HPC platform. The corresponding accumulated price will be provided even if this amount is purely indicative and won't be charged back.

Any other activities will be reviewed with the rectorate and are a priori subjected to be billed.

Research Projects

ULHPC Usage Charging Policy

The advertised prices are for internal partners only

The price list and all other information of this page are meant for internal partners, i.e., not for external companies. If you are not an internal partner, please contact us at hpc-partnership@uni.lu. Alternatively, you can contact LuxProvide, the national HPC center which aims at serving the private sector for HPC needs.

How to estimate HPC costs for projects?

You can use the following excel document to estimate the cost of your HPC usage:

UL HPC Cost Estimates for Project Proposals [xlsx]

Note that there are two sheets offering two ways to estimate based on your specific situation. Please read the red sections to ensure that you are using the correct estimation sheet.

Note that even if you plan for large-scale experiments on PRACE/EuroHPC supercomputers through computing credits granted by Call for Proposals for Project Access, you should plan for ULHPC costs since you will have to demonstrate the scalability of your code -- the University's facility is ideal for that. You can contact hpc-partnership@uni.lu for more details about this.

HPC price list - 2022-10-01

Note that ULHPC price list has been updated, see below.

Compute

Compute type Description € (excl. VAT) / node-hour
CPU - small 28 cores, 128 GB RAM 0.25€
CPU - regular 128 cores, 256 GB RAM 1.25€
CPU - big mem 112 cores, 3 TB RAM 6.00€
GPU 4 V100, 28 cores, 768 GB RAM 5.00€

The prices above correspond to a full-node cost. However, jobs can use a fraction of a node and the price of the job will be computed based on that fraction. Please find below the core-hour / GPU-hour costs and how we compute how much to charge:

Compute type Unit € (excl. VAT)
CPU - small Core-hour 0.0089€
CPU - regular Core-hour 0.0097€
CPU - big mem Core-hour 0.0535€
GPU GPU-hour 1.25€

For CPU nodes, the fraction correspond to the number of requested cores, e.g. 64 cores on a CPU - regular node corresponds to 50% of the available cores and thus will be charged 50% of 1.25€.

Regarding the RAM of a job, if you do not override the default behaviour, you will receive a percentage of the RAM corresponding to the amount of requested cores, e.g, 128G of RAM for the 64 cores example from above (50% of a CPU - regular node). If you override the default behaviour and request more RAM, we will re-compute the equivalent number of cores, e.g. if you request 256G of RAM and 64 cores, we will charge 128 cores.

For GPU nodes, the fraction considers the number of GPUs. There are 4 GPUs, 28 cores and 768G of RAM on one machine. This means that for each GPU, you can have up to 7 cores and 192G of RAM. If you request more than those default, we will re-compute the GPU equivalent, e.g. if you request 1 GPU and 8 cores, we will charge 2 GPUs.

Storage

Storage type € (excl. VAT) / GB / Month Additional information
Home Free 500 GB
Project 0.02€ 1 TB free
Scratch Free 10 TB

Note that for project storage, we charge the quota and not the used storage.

HPC Resource allocation for UL internal R&D and training

ULHPC resources are free of charge for UL staff for their internal work and training activities. Principal Investigators (PI) will nevertheless receive on a regular basis a usage report of their team activities on the UL HPC platform. The corresponding accumulated price will be provided even if this amount is purely indicative and won't be charged back.

Any other activities will be reviewed with the rectorate and are a priori subjected to be billed.

To allow the ULHPC team to keep track of the jobs related to a project, use the -A <projectname> flag in Slurm, either in the Slurm directives preamble of your script, e.g.,

#SBATCH -A myproject

or on the command line when you submit your job, e.g., sbatch -A myproject /path/to/launcher.sh

Externals and private partners

ULHPC Usage Charging Policy

The advertised prices are for internal partners only

The price list and all other information of this page are meant for internal partners, i.e., not for external companies. If you are not an internal partner, please contact us at hpc-partnership@uni.lu. Alternatively, you can contact LuxProvide, the national HPC center which aims at serving the private sector for HPC needs.

How to estimate HPC costs for projects?

You can use the following excel document to estimate the cost of your HPC usage:

UL HPC Cost Estimates for Project Proposals [xlsx]

Note that there are two sheets offering two ways to estimate based on your specific situation. Please read the red sections to ensure that you are using the correct estimation sheet.

Note that even if you plan for large-scale experiments on PRACE/EuroHPC supercomputers through computing credits granted by Call for Proposals for Project Access, you should plan for ULHPC costs since you will have to demonstrate the scalability of your code -- the University's facility is ideal for that. You can contact hpc-partnership@uni.lu for more details about this.

HPC price list - 2022-10-01

Note that ULHPC price list has been updated, see below.

Compute

Compute type Description € (excl. VAT) / node-hour
CPU - small 28 cores, 128 GB RAM 0.25€
CPU - regular 128 cores, 256 GB RAM 1.25€
CPU - big mem 112 cores, 3 TB RAM 6.00€
GPU 4 V100, 28 cores, 768 GB RAM 5.00€

The prices above correspond to a full-node cost. However, jobs can use a fraction of a node and the price of the job will be computed based on that fraction. Please find below the core-hour / GPU-hour costs and how we compute how much to charge:

Compute type Unit € (excl. VAT)
CPU - small Core-hour 0.0089€
CPU - regular Core-hour 0.0097€
CPU - big mem Core-hour 0.0535€
GPU GPU-hour 1.25€

For CPU nodes, the fraction correspond to the number of requested cores, e.g. 64 cores on a CPU - regular node corresponds to 50% of the available cores and thus will be charged 50% of 1.25€.

Regarding the RAM of a job, if you do not override the default behaviour, you will receive a percentage of the RAM corresponding to the amount of requested cores, e.g, 128G of RAM for the 64 cores example from above (50% of a CPU - regular node). If you override the default behaviour and request more RAM, we will re-compute the equivalent number of cores, e.g. if you request 256G of RAM and 64 cores, we will charge 128 cores.

For GPU nodes, the fraction considers the number of GPUs. There are 4 GPUs, 28 cores and 768G of RAM on one machine. This means that for each GPU, you can have up to 7 cores and 192G of RAM. If you request more than those default, we will re-compute the GPU equivalent, e.g. if you request 1 GPU and 8 cores, we will charge 2 GPUs.

Storage

Storage type € (excl. VAT) / GB / Month Additional information
Home Free 500 GB
Project 0.02€ 1 TB free
Scratch Free 10 TB

Note that for project storage, we charge the quota and not the used storage.

HPC Resource allocation for UL internal R&D and training

ULHPC resources are free of charge for UL staff for their internal work and training activities. Principal Investigators (PI) will nevertheless receive on a regular basis a usage report of their team activities on the UL HPC platform. The corresponding accumulated price will be provided even if this amount is purely indicative and won't be charged back.

Any other activities will be reviewed with the rectorate and are a priori subjected to be billed.

To allow the ULHPC team to keep track of the jobs related to a project, use the -A <projectname> flag in Slurm, either in the Slurm directives preamble of your script, e.g.,

#SBATCH -A myproject

or on the command line when you submit your job, e.g., sbatch -A myproject /path/to/launcher.sh

How to Get a New User account?

Account Request Form

  1. University staff - you can submit a request for a new ULHPC account by using the ServiceNow portal (Research > HPC > User access & accounts > New HPC account request).
    Students - submit your account request on the Student Service Portal.
    Externals - a University staff member must request the account for you, using the section New HPC account for external. Enter the professional data (organization and institutional email address). Specify the line manager / project PI if needed.
  2. If you need to access a specific project directory, ask the project directory owner to open a ticket using the section Add user within project.
  3. Your account will undergo user checks, in accordance with ULHPC policies, to verify your identity and the information proposed. Under some circumstances, there could be a delay while this vetting takes place.
  4. After vetting has completed, you will receive a welcome email with your login information, and a unique link to a PrivateBin 1 holding a random temporary password. That link will expire if not used within 24 hours. The PI and PI Proxies for the project will be notified when applicable.
  5. Finally, you will need to log into the HPC IPA Portal to set up your initial password and Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) for your account.
UL HPC \neq University credentials

Be aware that the source of authentication for the HPC services based on RedHat IdM/IPA DIFFERS from the University credentials (based on UL Active Directory).

  • ULHPC credentials are maintained by the HPC team; associated portal: https://hpc-ipa.uni.lu/ipa/ui/
    • authentication service for: UL HPC
  • University credentials are maintained by the IT team of the University
    • authentication service for Service Now and all other UL services

Managing User Accounts

ULHPC user accounts are managed in through the HPC IPA web portal.

Security Incidents

If you think there has been a computer security incident, you should contact the ULHPC Team and the University CISO team as soon as possible:

To: hpc-team@uni.lu,laurent.weber@uni.lu

Subject: Security Incident for HPC account '<login>' (ADAPT accordingly)

Please save any evidence of the break-in and include as many details as possible in your communication with us.

How to Get a New Project account?

Projects are defined for accounting purposes and are associated to a set of user accounts allowed by the project PI to access its data and submit jobs on behalf of the project account. See Slurm Account Hierarchy.

You can request (or be automatically added) to project accounts for accounting purposes. For more information, please see the Project Account documentation

FAQ

Can I share an account? – Account Security Policies

Danger

The sharing of passwords or login credentials is not allowed under UL HPC and University information security policies. Please bear in mind that this policy also protects the end-user.

Sharing credentials removes the ability to audit and accountability for the account holder in case of account misuse. Accounts which are in violation of this policy may be disabled or otherwise limited. Accounts knowingly skirting this policy may be banned.

If you find that you need to share resources among multiple individuals, shared projects are just the way to go, and remember that the University extends access to its HPC resources (i.e., facility and expert HPC consultants) to the scientific staff of national public organizations and external partners for the duration of joint research projects under the conditions defined above.

When in doubt, please contact us and we will be happy to assist you with finding a safe and secure way to do so.

  1. PrivateBin is a minimalist, open source online pastebin where the server has zero knowledge of pasted data. Data is encrypted / decrypted in the browser using 256bit AES in Galois Counter mode. ↩