Group Management

Overview

HPC groups allow faculty members to manage file permissions, job allocations, and group members. When a PI creates a new HPC account, a group is created with an allocation of space and time. Additional storage is available for free upon request, called xdisk

There are two types of Groups:

Research Groups

Research groups include any faculty, postdocs, graduate students, DCCs, staff, or student workers actively affiliated with your group's research.
Class Groups

These are for educational purposes only and will include students enrolled in a semester-long course.

Research Groups

If you are a faculty member who has registered for an HPC account, a research group named after your UArizona NetID has been automatically created for you. This group has an allocation of CPU hours associated with it as well as communal storage for your data.

Membership and Allocation

Members of research groups have full access to the PI's allocation. PIs are able to create multiple research groups that pull from the same allocation. Users are able to be members of multiple research groups. Creating multiple research groups does not change the total CPU-time allocation.

Permissions

Research groups can also be used to manage access permissions to files and folders on HPC. The PI can use the chgrp command to change which group has access rights corresponding to the 'group' setting on a particular item. See our Linux File Permissions cheat sheet for more information.

Adding Members

To add members to your research group, go to https://portal.hpc.arizona.edu/ and click the Groups tab at the top of the screen.

Manage group members

Click your group's dropdown tab and navigate to where it says Add a new group member. In the field below, enter the new group member's NetID and click " ADD MEMBER".

Add NetID

To add members in bulk, you may also select Upload Member List and upload a CSV file of UArizona NetIDs.

The process of adding new members may take a few seconds to complete. Once the changes have taken place, you will see the user's NetID in your group.

Creating a New Group

A new group can be created at any time through the user portal. New groups will share their time and storage allocations with your primary group. Alternate research groups can be a good solution for managing file permissions. For example, if a particular directory and its contents needs restricted access, you could do this by creating a new research group, adding the group members who need access to those files, and then changing the group ownership of the files/directories.

To create a new group, log into the user portal, navigate to the Groups tab and select the Add New Group dropdown menu. In the Group Name field, enter the name of the group you'd like to create. Under Group Type, select researchGroup, then select the to confirm.

Add new research group

Once your group has been created, you will see it when running va (short for View Allocation) in the same block as your primary group:

(puma) [faculty-netid@junonia ~]$ va
PI: parent_1206 Total time: 7000:00:00
    Group: faculty-netid Time used: 0:00:00 Time encumbered: 0:00:00
    Group: your-new-group Time used: 0:00:00 Time encumbered: 0:00:00
    Total used: 0:00:00
    Total encumbered: 0:00:00
    Total remaining: 7000:00:00

Class Groups

Tip

If you are interested in having an HPC staff member come to your class to do an Intro to HPC presentation, reach out to our consultants.

If you are a faculty member and are teaching a course that makes use of HPC resources, you can create a class group that will grant your students system access. Class groups are designed to be created and used for one semester only.

Class Group Restrictions

Due to Arizona sales tax restrictions class groups are restricted to the Ocelote cluster and cannot use Puma or El Gato. To submit standard jobs on Ocelote, students will use the class group's name for the --account Slurm directive. For example:

#SBATCH --account=hpc101
#SBATCH --partition=standard

Class group members may also use the Windfall partition on Ocelote.

Creating a Class Group

Log into your user portal, navigate to the Groups tab, and select the Add New Group dropdown option at the top of the page.There will be an option to specify your Group Type. Choose classGroup from the dropdown menu. Then under Group Name enter the name of your group. Finally, click to complete the process.

Class group interface

Once this process is complete, you can find your group's dropdown under the Groups tab. There you can add students either individually or in batch by uploading a CSV file with your student's NetIDs. You may also remove students from the group by clicking the "REMOVE " button. You can also delete the group itself by selecting " REMOVE GROUP".

Class group interface

File Permissions and Storage

Students in your class group will only be able to access files and directories owned by the class group. This means they will not be able to access files and directories owned by your standard research group.

Running Jobs and Allocations

Due to Arizona sales tax restrictions class groups may only use the Ocelote cluster. To submit standard jobs on Ocelote, students will use the class group's name for the --account Slurm directive. For example:

#SBATCH --account=hpc101
#SBATCH --partition=standard

Standard hours used on Ocelote are pulled from the same pool as your research group so make sure to plan accordingly. If a student runs the command va, they will see the class group as being nested under the total time allocated to your primary research group as well as any others you may have created. Students will not see the names of your other research groups if they run va unless they are members.

(ocelote) [faculty_netid@wentletrap ~]$ va
Windfall: Unlimited

PI: parent_000 Total time: 100000:00:00
    Group: hpc101 Time used: 0:00:00 Time encumbered: 0:00:00
    Group: faculty_netid Time used: 0:00:00 Time encumbered: 0:00:00
    Total used: 0:00:00
    Total encumbered: 0:00:00
    Total remaining: 100000:00:00

Delegating Group Management Rights

Adding a Delegate

PI's can delegate management rights to trusted group members. Delegates may create research and class groups, sponsor users, remove users, and request and manage storage offerings on behalf of their faculty sponsor. To add a group member as a delegate, the PI can click the Manage Delegates link on the home page of the user portal.

Adding a group delegate

In the Manage Delegates window that appears, select Add a delegate, enter your group member's NetID, and click .

Adding a group delegate

Instructions for Delegates

Once a group member has been added as a delegate, they can log into the user portal, then select Switch User from the Home tab.

Adding a group delegate

In the next window, they can enter their PI's NetID under Switch user form --> UA NetID, and click . They should see Current effective user change from their own NetID to their PI's NetID. This will allow them to perform functions on their PI's behalf. They may switch back to their own account at any time by following the same process, entering their own NetID in the form instead of their PI's.

Delegate instructions