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SSERCA

FAU is an Affiliate Member of SSERCA

Florida’s public and private Universities are home to talented scientists, high-end computing facilities, massive data storage systems, highly specialized research instruments, and high-speed networks. The Sunshine State Education & Research Computing Alliance (SSERCA) brings together these geographically distributed organizations and resources in such a way that their collective impact is far greater than the sum of their individual parts. The mission of SSERCA is to further the development of a state-wide computational science infrastructure of advanced scientific computing, communication and education resources by promoting cooperation between Florida’s universities. On this web site you will find descriptions of projects that SSERCA is currently supporting with funding from the Board of Governor’s New Florida Initiative. In addition, this web site serves as a showcase and clearing house for information related to the hardware and intellectual assets hosted by participating universities. The searchable database also gives researchers an easy way to locate the resources needed to effectively face the challenges associated with 21st century research.

 

SSERCA Cloud-like resource allocation policy and procedures

The purpose and goal of the shared resources provided and operated by the member institutions for all faculty members at SSERCA member and affiliate institutions is to enable, foster, and support collaborations involving BIGDATA and computation. The goal is not to provide long term facility like the NSF funded XSEDE, where researchers can obtain access to HPC resources by submitting a proposal. The allocations provided by SSERCA are intended to be small and to serve to explore possibilities and capabilities. Full support for long term projects is expected to be associated with one of the long term buy-in and funding mechanisms provided for such projects at one of the member institution HPC centers.

  1. Terminology
    • SSERCA Resources in this document means compute capability and storage capacity provided as a cloud-like unified service provided through SSERCA by the members of SSERCA.
    • Directors discretionary request is a small sized-request that can be processed quickly.
    • Cloud-like service is the name for the computing service offered on SSERCA member institution resources and accessed through the SSERCA website http://sserca.org.
  2. Eligibility
    • Faculty members and research scientists at SSERCA member and affiliate institutions are allowed to apply for SSERCA resources under the rules and conditions set forth in this document.
    • Individuals applying for said resources may be eligible to apply for or otherwise be entitled to additional resources provided by the member institutions under other prevailing policies and rules.
  3. Allocations
    • Applicants can request an allocation in the form of hours of computing and TB of storage. At this time, the maximum allocation for any directors-discretionary request is 10,000 hours and 2 TB of long-term shared storage.
    • Researchers who need more resources than that for any project, need to fill out the application form and the review will take longer and the allocation of the resources will be explicitly with one or more member institutions. Access to use the resources will possibly require direct access to the member institution HPC resources, rather than through the general SSERCA cloud-like service website.

SSERCA Cloud-like resource allocation procedures

  1. Application process
    • Eligible researchers should apply for SSERCA resources by filling in the Services Request Form at the SSERCA web site.
    • The application will be reviewed and approved by the Managing Committee (See [Bylaws] section 3.2). Details of the format and process of applications are listed in the section below.
  2. Resource Usage
    • SSERCA directors-discretionary resource allocations are accessed and used only through the SSERCA website.
    • Faculty and research associates at member and affiliate institutions can in addition to directors-discretionary allocations also have arrangements and allocations with specific member institution HPC Centers.

All SSERCA members will make some number of cores and some storage available for collaborative projects lead by faculty at SSERCA member and affiliate institutions as follows:

  • Access to the cores and memory will be made available upon request by affiliated members and other educational institutions in Florida upon written request that includes the following:
    1. Organization (e.g., University), department, investigator
    2. Statement of intended use of computing resources (to include duration)
    3. Any affiliation with one of the SSERCA institutions and faculty member 
name(s)
    4. Compute resources being requested
  • Cores and memory will be available on a priority basis to applicants.
  • Faculty at SSERCA member institutions are eligible to apply for cycles at other member institutions.
  • Compute and memory access will be available to an individual for no longer than one month.
  • Use by a particular researcher or research group will be limited to 5 times per calendar year.
  • Preference will be given in the following priority (high to low):
    1. faculty at SSERCA member institutions,
    2. SSERCA affiliates,
    3. other educational institutions.

Within any category previously mentioned, priority will be given to requests made in collaboration with a current faculty in a SSERCA member.
The above shall be submitted in writing for consideration by the SSERCA computing directors at their weekly teleconference.

Software Licensing issues
Users of SSERCA compute and storage resources should be aware that software licensing arrangements may preclude use of host institution software by others.

  • In the case that software license terms and conditions are in conflict with the above policies and procedures, the software license terms and conditions will prevail.
  • In some cases the user of the compute and storage resources may have to supply and pay for the softeare license they intend to use.
  • User support for the software should primarily be provided by
    1. the institution’s SSERCA contact person of the faculty user at affiliates, or
    2. the HPC Center at members, or
    3. the software vendor in case a contract for licensed sofwtare exists between the institution of the faculty user and the software vendor.

 

 

Updated with information from SSERCA.ORG (July 9, 2013)