BwForCluster User Access

The usage of bwForCluster is free of charge. bwForClusters are customized to the requirements of particular research areas. Each bwForCluster is/will be financed by the DFG (German Research Foundation) and by the Ministry of Science, Research and Arts of Baden-Württemberg based on scientifc grant proposal (compare proposals guidelines as per Art. 91b GG).

Granting user access to a bwForCluster requires 3 steps:

1. Registration of your compute project at "Zentrale Antragsseite (ZAS)",
2. Application for bwForCluster entitlement issued by your university,
3. Personal registration at assigned cluster site based on approved compute project and issued bwForCluster entitlement.

Step 1 and 2 are pre-steps and requirements of step 3. Moreover, steps 1 and 2 can be done in parallel. At which bwForCluster site you can do step 3 will be decided by the cluster assignment team (CAT) based on the data of step 1, i.e. at ZAS.

Compute project registration at ZAS

A compute project registration at ZAS does NOT correspond to typical compute project proposals as for other HPC clusters, since:

• there is no scientific reviewing process
• the registration inquires only brief details
• it covers a group of coworkers and
• only the project responsible must submit it.

How to register?

Compute project

Typically only the leader of a scientific work group or the senior scientific needs to login at

• https://www.bwhpc-c5.de/en/ZAS/bwforcluster_proposal.php

and fill in all mandatory fields of the given form. Please note that for your convenience you can also switch to the german version of the web form. The submitter of the project will be assigned the role project responsible.

field	explanation
Title	Define a short title of your compute project, maximum 255 characters including spaces
Description	Write a short abstract about your compute project (maximum 2048 characters including spaces). Research groups that contributed to the DFG grant proposal (Art. 91b GG) of the corresponding bwForCluster only need to reference to that proposal.
Scientific Field	Tick one ore several scientific fields. Once all bwForClusters are up and running the full list of given scientific fields are supported and hence for compute projects applicable. If your compute project does not match any given scientific field, please state your scientific field in the given text box. Gray scientific fields indicate that the corresponding bwForCluster is yet not operational.
Field of activity	Define if your compute project is primarily for research and/or teaching. If not applicable use text box.
Parallel paradigm	State what parallel paradigm your code or application will use. Multiple ticks are allowed. Further information can be provided via text box
Programming Language	State the programming language(s) of your code or application.
Estimated requested computing resources	Roughly estimate how much CPU hours is required to finish your compute project. To calculate CPU hours multiple "elapsed parallel computing time" with "number of CPU core" per job.
Planned maximum number of parallel used CPU cores per job	Give an upper threshold on how many CPU cores your jobs require.
Estimated maximal memory requirements per CPU core	Give an upper threshold on how much RAM per CPU core your jobs require.
Estimated requested persistent disk space for this project	State the maximum disk space to finish your compute project. Be aware
Estimated maximal temporary disk space per job
Institute

Response

1. After submitting you will get an email from ZAS confirming your submission. With this email you are given an unique
   * acronym
   * password
   Please keep the password enclosed. Only with both, acronym and password, coworkers can be added to your compute project.
2. The cluster assignment team will be notified immediately about your submission.
3. The cluster assignment team decides within 2 working days and based on your submitted data which bwForCluster most fits and submits its decision to ZAS.
4. ZAS notifies you in an email about your assigned bwForCluster and provides website details for step 3.

Coworkers

Important, each coworker must add herself/himself to compute project, since only via personal authentication the correctness of personal credentials (provided by your home organization) can be guaranteed. To become coworker of a compute project, please login at

• https://www.bwhpc-c5.de/en/ZAS/bwforcluster_collaboration.php

and provide correct

• password
• acronym

of the compute project. The submitter will be assigned the role project member.

Response

1. After submitting the request for participating a project, the coworker will receive an email from ZAS about the process. The membership status is set active.
2. Each person with the role project responsible and project manager will be notified. Any of these persons can crosscheck via https://www.bwhpc-c5.de/en/ZAS/info_compute_project.php and clicking on the correct project acronym the correctness of the process.
3. The project responsible can set any project member to project manager and vice versa as well as deactivate any membership.
4. Any project manager can deactivate any membership.

Issueing bwForCluster entitlement

Each university issues the bwForCluster entitlement only for their own members. Details on the issuing process and/or the entitlement application forms are listed hereafter:

• Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg
• Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen
• Karlsruhe Institute of Technology
• Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg
• Ulm University
• University of Hohenheim
• University of Konstanz
• University of Mannheim
• University of Stuttgart

Personal registration at bwForCluster

Once you have registered your compute project at ZAS by filling a short online form, the cluster assignment team will provide you with information about your designated bwForCluster - basically providing your with the correct website to finally register yourself for the designated cluster.

Please note, this step is different to your registration at ZAS since here you do not register your compute project but yourself as person. Only based on your personal credentials a user account can be generated. However, given resource requests for compute project at the ZAS will be crosschecked with the consumed resources by you and your coworkers of the compute project.

After step 1 and 2, i.e., approval of your compute project and issued bwForCluster entitlement, please visit:

• Cluster registration website (details given by CAT)
  1. Select your home organization from the list and click Proceed
  2. You will be directed to the Identity Provider of your home organisation
  3. Enter your home-organisational user ID / username and your home-organisational password and click Login button
  4. You will be redirected back to the cluster registration website
  5. Select bwForCluster Service Description (on the left hand side)
  6. Click Register
  7. Finally
     • optionally set a service password for authentication on bwForCluster

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