cluster – FASRC DOCS

SEAS Compute Resources

The Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) has a number of compute resources managed by FAS Research Computing. These compute partitions are open to all researchers at SEAS and their allocation is governed by the relative fairshare of the groups. The partitions themselves are broken down into the following:

seas_compute: This block of compute contains 4980 cores of compute ranging from Intel Broadwell to Intel Ice Lake. This partition has a 7 day time limit.
seas_gpu: This block of GPU’s contains 2564 cores of compute ranging from Intel Broadwell to Intel Ice Lake and 239 GPU’s ranging from Nvidia Titan X to A100 chipsets. This partition has a 7 day time limit. Interactive jobs on seas_gpu are limited to being less than 6 hours and no more than 2 cores.

Both seas_compute and seas_gpu are mosaic partitions, meaning they have a variety of hardware and interconnects. For users requiring specific types of hardware or for MPI users who need a single Infiniband fabric (i.e. HDR vs. FDR) please use the --constraint option in Slurm. A full list of constraints can be found on the Running Jobs page. To get specific gpu models see the GPU section of the Running Jobs page. For more information about Slurm partitions on the FAS RC cluster, please refer to the Running Jobs document.

For researchers needing a secure environment, the FAS Secure Environment (FASSE) is a secure multi-tenant cluster environment to provide Harvard researchers access to a secure enclave for analysis of sensitive datasets with DUA‘s and IRB’s classified as Level 3. Please see the FASSE cluster documentation for how to gain access. Note that a home folder on FASSE is separate from any home folder you might have on the FASRC (Cannon) cluster. Data from the secure level 3 (FASSE) environment should not be transferred into level 2 space (Cannon).

Adding additional lab groups or cluster access

GROUP MEMBERSHIP

If you already have a FAS RC account (Note: multiple accounts are not allowed) and need to request membership in an additional lab group, the following will explain how to do so.

Your account can belong to multiple groups, with your PI/sponsor’s lab group being your primary. If you need to submit jobs under different labs groups you belong to, see: How do I fairly manage dual/multiple lab affiliations for work on the FASRC cluster?

CHANGING LABS

If you need to change your primary PI/sponsor to another lab group, please see How do I change lab groups?.

ADDING GROUPS

Requesting additional groups for file access can be done via our Portal.

Log into the Portal and select ‘Cluster Access’ on the left (or click here: https://portal.rc.fas.harvard.edu/request/ )
Two new links should appear on the left
– My Grants – Shows you all your current grants/memberships
– Add Grants – Lets you request new grants/memberships
Find the grant you wish to add and select its check box. A window will pop up allowing you to Cancel or Request Selected.

After clicking Request Selected, an approval message will be sent to the group’s approver (usually the PI, their lab manager, admin, etc.)

Once they approve your request, you will receive a notification via email.

You can check the status of your request or the groups you currently have by clicking on the My Grants link at any time.

NOTE: If you will need to be able to run jobs under that secondary group’s fairshare, please send FASRC a ticket (via Portal or Email) asking to be added to the lab’s SLURM group. See managing dual/multiple lab affiliations for details on using switching fairshare affiliations on jobs.

ADDING CLUSTER ACCESS

If you did not initially request cluster login access, you can also use the procedure above to request Cluster Access. This will allow you to log into the cluster and submit jobs. Go to Add Grants, Click ‘Cluster’ (if it does not appear, then you already have cluster access) to select the ‘FASRC cluster access’ checkbox.

If you are trying to SSH into the cluster and are constantly asked for your password or get an error about your home directory, this is the cause.

SPINAL

For SPINAL access questions, please see: Instrument SignUp/SPINAL