Allocation Policies and Best Practices

1. Allocation Policies and Best Practices David L. Hart, Allocations Coordinator dhart@sdsc.edu SDSC Summer Institute July 20, 2007

2. The Basics ? • Who • What • When • Where • Why • How

3. The Lingo • AAP • UC Academic Associates Program • DAC • Development Allocation Committee • MRAC • Medium Resource Allocations Committee • LRAC • Large Resource Allocations Committee • POPS • Partnerships Online Proposal System • Roaming • TeraGrid (Wide) Roaming (Access) • SU • Service Unit

4. The Process: Getting Started • 10 Minutes to an Allocation • Go to POPS • Create a POPS user ID. • Login. • Select “New” proposal type. • Select “0-30,000.” • Click on “DAC-TeraGrid” or “DAC-SDSC.” • Fill out PI Info, Proposal Info, and Resource Request screens. • Upload PI’s CV. • Press “Final Submission.” • Start-up Allocations (DAC Awards) • Accepted, reviewed, awarded on a continual basis • Up to 30,000 SUs, 5 TB disk, 25 TB tape • Best for • Code development, testing • Gathering performance data for MRAC/LRAC proposals • Classroom instruction • Small-scale computation • UC AAP is an even faster way to get started for small-scale needs.

5. PIs need to be aware of the lead time for getting an MRAC or LRAC award Requires a written proposal Reviewed by domain experts LRAC >500,000 SUs, >25 TB disk, >100 TB tape Reviewed semi-annually Awards begin April 1, Oct. 1 The Process: Going MRAC (or LRAC) • MRAC • Limit: 500,000 SUs, 25 TB disk, 100 TB tape • Reviewed quarterly • Awards begin Jan. 1, April 1, July 1, Oct. 1

6. The Awards • One per PI • Allocations made for 12-month periods • Unused SUs are forfeited at the end of an award period • Add users to a grant via TeraGrid User Portal • Progress report required annually as part of renewal proposals and multi-year awards

7. The Options • Asking for Help • allocations@teragrid.org • Multi-year Awards • Possible, but not recommended for new PIs • Only Progress Reports required in subsequent years • Justifications • To address reviewer concerns and get more of the requested resources • Best for specific omissions (not to salvage horrible proposals) • Supplements • Request additional resources during a 12-month allocation period • Not for DACs! Reviewed by MRAC/LRAC members. • Extensions • Can extend award period an additional 6 months for cause • No additional resources! • Advances • UP to 10% of MRAC/LRAC request can be provided in advance

8. The Resources: Compute • Compute • Also Visualization • TeraGrid Resources Catalog • Can request specific resource(s) or TeraGrid Roaming • Except TeraGrid DACs, which are roaming only • Requests made in SUs SDSC’s Blue Gene

9. The Resources: Storage • Long-term disk and tape • Policies now formalized across TeraGrid • SDSC makes several such resources available • SDSC Database • SDSC Collections Disk Space • SDSC Tape Storage • TeraGrid GPFS-WAN • Requests made in TBs • But all compute allocations still include some default tape storage • But no longer unlimited

10. The Resources: Advanced Support • NEW! • Dedicated TeraGrid staff assistance • Limited resources • MRAC/LRAC reviewers rate possible projects • Extra info required for proposals, see: http://www.teragrid.org/userinfo/asp.php

11. The Proposal: POPS • Straightforward (mostly) • Once you get to the Web-based data entry forms • Latest changes • Supporting grant information • You can now login to POPS with your TeraGrid Portal login • Coming soon • Better TeraGrid integration https://pops-submit.ci-partnership.org/

12. The Proposal: Proposal Document(s) • The real key to a successful review • There are page limits! • Sample proposals online • But now, some tips and advice… http://www.ci-partnership.org/Allocations/

13. “Traditional” v. Community • MRAC/LRAC proposals are accepted in four general categories of research activities • Individual investigator • Research collaborations (e.g., MILC consortium) • Community Projects (e.g., NEES) • Community Services (e.g., TeraGrid Gateways) • The general requirements for proposals of all four types remain largely the same. • Whether requesting compute, storage, advanced support or some combination

14. Proposal Review Criteria • Methodology • The choice of applications, methods, algorithms and techniques to be employed to accomplish the stated science objectives should be reasonably justified. While the accomplishment of the stated objectives in support of the science is important, it is incumbent on proposers to consider the methods available to them and to use that which is best suited. • Appropriate Use of Resources • The resources chosen must be an appropriate match for the applications and methodologies to be used and must be in accordance with the recommended use guidelines for those resources • Efficient Use of Resources • The resources selected must be used as efficiently as is reasonably possible. For compute resources, performance and parallel scaling data should be provided for all applications to be used along with a discussion of optimization and/or parallelization work to be done to improve the applications. For storage resources, proposals should provide information on required performance and expected access patterns for all data and collections to be stored and used as well as work done or planned to improve the efficiency of the data access or use.http://www.ci-partnership.org/Allocations/allocationspolicy.html

15. Additional Review Considerations • Prior progress • From prior year allocation, DAC award, or work done locally • Ability to complete the work plan described(more significant for larger requests) • Sufficient merit-reviewed funding • Staff, both number and experience • Local computing environment • Other access to HPC resources • (e.g., Campus centers, DOE centers)

16. General Proposal Outline • Research Objectives • Codes and methods to be used • Computational plan • Justification for SUs (TB-yrs) requested • Additional considerations Note: Sections III and IV are often integrated.

17. I. Research Objectives • Traditional proposals • Describe the research activities to be pursued • Community proposals • Describe the classes of research activities that the proposed effort will support. • Keep it short: You only need enough detail to support the methods and computational plan being proposed. • TIP—Reviewers don’t want to read the proposal you submitted to NSF/NIH/etc., but they will notice whether you have merit-reviewed funding.

18. II. Codes, Data, and Methods • Very similar between traditional and community proposals. • For compute requests • More significant if using ‘home-grown’ codes. • Provide performance and scaling details on problems and test cases similar to those being pursued. • Ideally, provide performance and scaling data collected by you for the specific resource(s) you are requesting • For storage requests • Provide description of data to be stored (organization, formats, collection mechanisms, permissions granted or received) • Describe the amount and expected growth of data to be stored.

19. III. Computational Plan • Traditional proposals • Explicitly describe the problem cases you will examine • BAD: “…a dozen or so important proteins under various conditions…” • GOOD: “…7 proteins [listed here; include scientific importance of these selections somewhere, too]. Each protein will require [X] number of runs, varying 3 parameters [listed here] [in very specific and scientifically meaningful ways]…” • Community proposals • Explicitly describe the typical use-case(s) that the gateway supports and the type of runs that you expect users to make • Describe how you will help ensure that the community will make scientifically meaningful runs (if applicable) • BAD: “…the gateway lets users run NAMD on TeraGrid resources…” • BETTER: “…users will run NAMD jobs on [biological systems like this]…” • BETTER STILL: “…the gateway allows users to run NAMD jobs on up to 128 processors on problem sizes limited [in some fashion]…”

20. IV. Justification of SUs, TBs • Traditional proposals • If you’ve done sections II and III well, this section should be a straightforward math problem • For each research problem, calculate the SUs required based on runs defined in III and the timings in section II, broken out appropriately by resource • Reasonable scaling estimates from test-case timing runs to full-scale production runs are acceptable. • Clear presentation here will allow reviewers to cut time or storage in a rational fashion • Analogous calculations should apply for storage requests

21. IV. Justification of SUs, TBs • Community proposals • The first big trick: Calculating SUs when you don’t know the precise runs to be made a priori. • In Year 2 and beyond • Start with an estimate of total usage based on prior year’s usage patterns and estimate for coming year’s usage patterns (justify in Section V). • From this information, along with data from sections II and III, you can come up with a tabulation of SU estimates. • Year 1 requires bootstrapping • Pick conservative values (and justify them) for the size of the community and runs to be made, and calculate SUs. • TIP—Start modestly. If you have ~0 users, don’t expect the reviewers to believe that you will get thousands (or even hundreds) next year. • Analogous calculations for TBs of storage needed

22. V. Additional Considerations • For traditional proposals, these are not controversial • Local computing environment • Other supercomputing resources • Prior Progress • Experience/staffing

23. V. Additional Considerations • For community proposals, these components can provide key details: • Community Support and Management Plan • Describe the gateway interface — in terms of how it helps community burn SUs or access TBs. • Describe plans for growing the user community, “graduating” users to MRAC awards, regulating “gateway hogs” • Progress report • The actual user community and usage patterns • Manuscripts produced thanks to this service. • Local computing environment • Other HPC resources

24. Questions? http://teragrid.org/userinfo/access/accounts.php http://www.sdsc.edu/us/allocations/ http://www.sdsc.edu/us/aap/ allocations@teragrid.org dhart@sdsc.edu