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Project Accounts

The Lawrencium cluster is open to all Berkeley Lab researchers needing access to high performance computing. Research collaborations are also welcome provided that there is a LBNL PI.

LBNL PIs wanting to obtain access to Lawrencium for their research project will need to complete the project request at myLRC portal , giving the details of the research activity along with a list of anticipated users. A unique group name will be created for the project and associated users. This group name will be used to setup allocations and report usage.

There are three primary ways to obtain access to Lawrencium:

  1. LBNL PIs: requesting a block of no-cost computing time via a PI Computing Allowance (PCA). This option is currently offered to all eligible Berkeley Lab PIs. For additional details on please see PI Computing Allowance .

  2. Condo projects: purchasing and contributing Condo nodes to the cluster. This option is open to any Berkeley Lab staff, and provides ongoing, priority access to you and your research affiliates who are members of the Condo. For details, please see Condo Cluster Service .

  3. Recharge use: Berkeley lab researchers who want to use Lawrencium cluster at a minimal recharge rate, roughly at $0.01/SU. For details, please see Recharge Allocation Computing Allowance .

To request a PCA, Condo or Recharge project on Lawrencium, please send your requests at myLRC portal . Make sure choosing the desired project type on the form.

Changing Your ProjectID and Valid ProjectID

If your projectID associated with project accounts on Lawrencium expires or becomes invalid, you can request of changing your projectID by submitting a PID change request .

To maintain your Lawrencium user account, you must have a valid PID. If your PID becomes invalid or you lose access to projects, for example, if you leave the last project or a PI removes you from it, your account will be temporarily blocked from logging into the cluster until a valid PID is supplied. A blocked account is still charged the $25/month account fee, because the account and its home directory still exist. See Charges and Billing.

Allocations

Computer Time: We are currently not using an allocation process to allocate compute time to individual projects. Instead, usage and priority will be regulated by a scheduler policy intended to provide a level of fairness across users. If needed, a committee consisting of scientific division representatives will review the need for allocations if demand exceeds supply.

Cost: Every user account is charged an account fee of $25/month (LRCACT) for account maintenance and home directory backups. This fee is for the account, not for compute: it is charged as long as the account exists, whether or not the user runs jobs or belongs to a project. Compute usage is charged (LRCCPU) only for jobs run under recharge (ac_*) accounts, at $0.01/SU. PCA and condo accounts are not charged for compute usage. See Charges and Billing for details.

Storage: Home directory space have a quota set at 30GB per user and is available at: /global/home/users/<username>. Users may also use the scratch shared filesystem: /global/scratch/users/<username> if they need more storage for a limited time; this scratch space is intended for short term use and should be considered volatile. Backups are not performed on this file system. Users should make sure to have a back up of these files to some external permanent storage as soon as they are generated on the cluster. More information on Storage.

Project Group Directories

Project group directories are not created by default. If you would like to create group directories where your group members can share data and software, please submit a service request on freshservice.

Acknowledgements

Please acknowledge Lawrencium in your publications. A sample statement is:

Sample Acknowledgement Statement

This research used the Lawrencium computational cluster resource provided by the IT Division at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Supported by the Director, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, of the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract No. DE-AC02-05CH11231)