Secure Services

Research Technologies in partnership with the Data Science Institute is providing a secure research enclave that is HIPAA compliant called Soteria. In Greek mythology, Soteria (Greek: Σωτηρία) was the goddess or spirit (daimon) of safety and salvation, deliverance, and preservation from harm.

Soteria uses the same Slurm scheduling system and software module interface as our main HPC computing clusters. For general information on HPC usage, the rest of our documentation site can be used. The information below covers everything specific to Soteria. Additional information can also be found at https://soteria.arizona.edu

Prerequisites and Registration

To gain access, you will need to submit a Soteria request form. Once your form has been reviewed and approved, you will receive an email with the subject UA Soteria Access Request Approved. This email will contain the next steps to take which are detailed below:

• Complete Required Training in Edge Learning

  The CRRSP (regulated research) team will register you for three required trainings listed below

  1. HIPAA Essentials
  2. Information Security: Insider Threat Awareness
  3. Information Security Awareness Certification

  You will receive instructions on accessing these courses in your confirmation email. Courses will also be findable here: https://uaccess.arizona.edu.

• Assignment to the Soteria VPN

  Once you have completed your required training, the CRRSP team will notify you via email when you have been assigned access to the Soteria VPN. This VPN is an important part of our HIPAA compliance and differentiates Soteria usage from the standard HPC clusters. Soteria access cannot be established when not connected to the VPN. For VPN access, use: vpn.arizona.edu/soteria.

  

• Additional Requirements

  The computer you will use to access Soteria services must meet the following requirements:

  1. The Operating System and applications must be updated with the latest patches.
  2. You must have a strong password to log into the computer (at least 8 characters and a mix of character types).
  3. This must not be a shared computer with other users.
  4. Up to date anti-virus software.

Access

VPN Required

You must be connected to the Soteria VPN to access the system.

Command Line Access

Soteria command line access is available with SSH using the hostname shell.cougar.hpc.arizona.edu as shown below (replacing <your_netid> with your own NetID):

$ ssh <your_netid>@shell.cougar.hpc.arizona.edu

Authorized uses only. All activity may be monitored and reported.
Last login: Tue Nov 29 06:18:33 2022 from ans-02.hpc.arizona.edu
Authorized uses only. All activity may be monitored and reported.
netid@taub:~ $

Taub is a login node and will provide the same functionality and have the same policies as the other HPC clusters. Modules are available on Soteria's compute nodes but not on the login node. The command interactive is available to request a session on a compute node and jobs may be submitted using the standard sbatch. More details on Slurm commands can be found in Running Jobs.

Graphical Interface

Similar to the other HPC clusters, we offer the service Open OnDemand to provide web browser access to Soteria. This can be used to navigate, view, and edit files as well as gain access to graphical applications.

To access the Soteria-specific OOD service, open the following link in your favorite browser: https://ondemand-hipaa.hpc.arizona.edu

The applications currently available are RStudio, Matlab and Python 3.9 (Jupyter).

Available Compute Resources

This small cluster has four standard compute nodes. Each has 94 cores and 470 GB memory available. The two GPU nodes have the same resources but there are also four V100 GPU's in each. You can use the Running Jobs documentation to learn how to use Slurm with these nodes.

Node Type	Node Names
Standard Nodes	r1u26n1,r1u27n1,r1u28n1,r1u29n1
GPU Nodes	r1u30n1,r1u32n1

Compute Time Allocations

All PI groups will receive a time allocation of 100,000 CPU hours per month. For general information on time allocations and charging, see our Allocations documentation

Storage

All users are granted a home directory. Additional communal space can be found in a /groups directory allocated to each PI. Your files can be accessed both on the HPC filexfer nodes(1) as well as when connected to Soteria. A summary of Soteria's storage is listed below:

1. hostname: filexfer.hpc.arizona.edu

Storage Allocation	Availability	Quota	Location on Soteria	Location on filexfer
Home	Allocated to each user	50 GB	/home/u<xx>/<your_netid>	/hipaa/home/u<xx>/<your_netid>
Groups	Allocated to each PI group	Unlimited	/groups/<pi_netid>	/hipaa/groups/<pi_netid>

Transferring Data

Globus can be used for moving data in and out of the Soteria environment. For more information on using Globus, see our Globus documentation

Soteria's endpoint is: UA HPC HIPAA Filesystems