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1.4 Allocation Policies

1.4.1 HPC Cluster Allocation Policy

  1. CHPC HPC clusters are available to qualified faculty and students (under faculty supervision). To request access to CHPC computer systems submit an online request. The general nodes of the Notchpeak clusters are allocated by the process described below.  Users can however, run freecycle on these clusters if they do not get or have consumed their allocation.  Freecycle runs are subject to being preempted by jobs with allocation. Users can also run without allocation as owner-guest on the owner nodes on Notchpeak, Kingspeak and Lonepeak, or as smithp-guest on Ash, again subject to the jobs being preemptable. Additionally, general nodes on Kingspeak and Lonepeak do not have allocation; instead they are run in a "Fair Share" mode to balance usage between groups. There is no preemption on these resources.

  2. Requesting allocations:
    All requests must be submitted by faculty with sponsored research projects (or their assigned delegate). CHPC uses core wall clock hour as the metric on the computational clusters.

     Node description  Charge (wallclock hours*number of cores) 
       1 Notchpeak node (32 cores per node) for 1 hour  32 hours (1.0 * 32 cores)
    1 Notchpeak node (40 cores per node) for 1 hour 40 hours (1.0 * 40 cores)
    1 Notchpeak node (64 cores per node) for 1 hour 64 hours (1.0 * 64 cores)

  3. Research groups requiring priority time on a given cluster must submit a proposal requesting up to 4 quarters at a time and will be due the first day of September, December, March and June for allocations beginning the following quarter:

       Quarter         Quarter Definition      Approximate Request Due Date
     Winter  January 1 - March 31 December 1
     Spring  April 1 - June 30 March 1
     Summer  July 1 - September 30 June 1
     Fall  October 1 - December 31 September 1

    The request must be made by the principal investigator of the sponsored research project, who must be a faculty member, or a designated delegate.

  4. Regular allocation requests: Starting with allocation requests for the Winter Quarter 2019 (period starting January 1, 2019) allocation request have been separated between requests for up to 20,000 core hours (small allocation request) and requests for more than 20,000 core hours (regular allocation request). While there is no change to the regular allocation request, the small request has been simplified so that only a Title, Abstract, sources of funding, and Publications resulting from the use of CHPC resources is needed.

     For a small allocation requests (20,000 or less per quarter):

    1. Authenticate to https://www.chpc.utah.edu/apps/profile/allocation_small_form.php using your campus uNID and password.
    2. Fill out the proposal form in detail. Please be sure to add all of the requested details about the sources of funding for the project(s) and all complete citations of publications.  When completed, click on the "Submit Proposal" button.
    3. You may return and edit and fill in additional parts of the form. When you are satisfied with your proposal, change the "Request Status" setting near the top of the form to "Submitted - Ready for CHPC to Review". If you want to make additional changes after you have Submitted the form, please contact CHPC by sending email to helpdesk@chpc.utah.edu.  
    4. Review Procedure:  Reviewed by CHPC staff and awarded at CHPC's discretion. 
    5. The maximum award is 20,000 per quarter.

  5. For a regular allocation request (over 20,000 up to 200,000) :

    1. Authenticate to https://www.chpc.utah.edu/apps/profile/allocation_form.php using your campus uNID and password.
    2. Fill out the proposal form in detail. Please make sure to justify your request by explaining how much computational time you expect to require. Specific timings of your application runs, their size and duration are important in your justification. When completed, click on the "Submit Proposal" button.
    3. You may return and edit and fill in additional parts of the form. When you are satisfied with your proposal, change the "Request Status" setting near the top of the form to "Submitted - Ready for CHPC to Review". If you want to make additional changes after you have Submitted the form, please contact CHPC by sending email to helpdesk@chpc.utah.edu.  
    4. Review Procedure:  Proposals will be evaluated by the CHPC Allocation Committee. The committee will meet during the month prior to allocation period, to consider allocations for the following quarter. Before each meeting, CHPC will provide an estimate of the resources available for allocation in the four upcoming quarters as well as any other technical information the committee may deem appropriate. 
    5. The maximum award is 200,000 per quarter.
  6. "Quick" Allocation:  
    CHPC allows faculty with sponsored research and without a current allocation to submit allocation proposals after the aforementioned deadlines with some restrictions. The request cannot be for more than 30,000 wallclock core hours, and the allocation is for the current quarter. There are no renewals of Quick Allocations. The review of these proposals is expedited and awards are given in a few days. Submit your allocation request online using our web application.
    1. Authenticate to https://www.chpc.utah.edu/apps/profile/allocation_quick_form.php using your campus uNID and password.
    2. Fill out the proposal form in detail.  When completed, click on the "Submit Proposal" button.
    3. You may return and edit and fill in additional parts of the form. When you are satisfied with your proposal, change the "Request Status" setting near the top of the form to "Submitted - Ready for CHPC to Review". If you want to make additional changes after you have Submitted the form, please contact CHPC by sending email to helpdesk@chpc.utah.edu.
    4. Quick reviews will be performed by the Director and/or the Associate Director of CHPC, and awards given for up to 20,000 core wall clock hours for the current quarter only.
  7. Unused Allocations: Allocations unused in any quarter cannot be carried over to the next.
  8. Users without allocation and those whose usage exceeds their groups allocation will run in the system in "freecycle" mode, running at lowest priority and depending on the individual cluster policies, may be eligible for pre-emption. See Policy 2.1 General HPC Cluster Policies to see the individual cluster policies.]

1.4.2 Virtual Machine Allocation Policy

CHPC can provision virtual machines for sponsored research projects when the application or tools required do not fit with our other HPC resources (i.e. computation clusters). Please note that CHPC is now charging for virtual machines. For current pricing structure, see this page. To request a virtual machine for these purposes, please send the request via an email to helpdesk@chpc.utah.edu.  The request must come from, or be approved by a PI who has been setup as a CHPC PI. Please provide the following information :

  • A project name and brief description of your research. Please include sources of funding, including funding agency, grant/contract numbers.
  • Operating System - must be one of the following
    • Currently supported versions of Red Hat Enterprise (currently RHEL 7 and 8)
    • Currently supported versions of Windows Server (currently 2019 unless a different version is required)
    • Other (Please provide a detailed justification why your application cannot use one of the above operating systems)
  • Number of blocks; see pricing page. 
  • The desired IP name for the host
  • The requested security model for this host. Choices are:
    • CHPC Administered
    • Self Administered (NOT an option for virtual machines with personal health information (PHI) data.)
    • Shared Administration (please provide justification for this choice).
  • Name of the administrator of this VM
  • Detail the security requirements of this host including if there will be any personal health information (PHI) data involved in the project. If there is PHI, additional information such as Institutional Review Board (IRB) documents and software descriptions will be required. VMs provisioned for projects using PHI data will be provisioned in the Protected Environment and will require users be HIPAA trained in addition to meeting the standards for running in the CHPC Protected environment.
  • The completion of a Faculty Resource User Agreement (FRUA) is required.

For more details, see our 2.5 Virtual Machine Policies

1.4.3 Allocation Committee

Dr. Tom Cheatham (Ex Officio)
Director CHPC

Julia Harrison  (Ex Officio)
Associate Director, CHPC

Anita Orendt  (Ex Officio)
Assistant Director, CHPC - Research Consulting & Faculty Engagement

Dr. Dmitry Bedrov
Materials Science

Dr. Julio Facelli
Biomedical Informatics

Dr. Jake Hochhalter
Mechanical Engineering

Dr. Adam Kochanski
Atmospheric Science

Dr. Ryan Steele
Chemistry 

Last Updated: 7/5/23