_{Updated 2023-03-24}

PACE Policies¶

Software is a critical component of the clusters. The primary software stack will be based on RedHat Enterprise Linux and other widely available open source tools. Available software and versions can be listed on systems using the "module spider" command. All software on PACE-administered clusters must be installed and used in compliance with Georgia Tech's Computer and Network Usage and Data Access Policies. Software installation policies can be found in below sections.

There are regularly scheduled maintenance windows scheduled four times annually. The degree of impact depends on the type of maintenance being performed. All efforts are made to limit downtime during prescribed maintenance periods. All users will be notified via email well in advance of upcoming scheduled maintenance events.

Jobs must be run using provided workload schedulers. This allows users to gain experience with standard HPC environments which are used in other places, including national labs and ACCESS.

Headnodes (login nodes) are shared by multiple users and must be used only for submitting jobs and other light-weight activities. It is against policy to run any operation on the headnodes that will impact their responsiveness for other users. You may not run processes that consume 90% or more of a CPU for more than 30 minutes or that occupy 20% of the available memory at any time. Data operations (e.g., large transfers, compression/decompression, pre-/post-processing) should be limited to avoid adverse impact on the responsiveness of the headnodes. Processes violating this policy may be terminated by the PACE team at any time. PACE will show best effort to contact the users before killing processes, but we reserve the right to terminate any processes in violation without notification.

Both home directories and project directories are subject to quotas. Quotas limit the amount of data that can be stored.
Project storage is subject to quotas based on requests from a PI. Authorized requests must be sent to pace-support@oit.gatech.edu.
Home and project space are backed up daily. Please contact pace-support@oit.gatech.edu to restore deleted files.

PACE Data Management and Retention Guidelines
PACE takes responsibility for the storage of all data from our old systems in the Rich datacenter that has not been assigned to a current member of the faculty. All of this data has been inaccessible to all users since December 1, 2020. Any school that wishes to do so may request data of a former faculty member and thereby assume responsibility for the data and for the cost of continuing to store it on PACE (unless it is relocated), in accordance with the Data Retention Guidelines provided by the GT administration and shared with you at this time. If the school does not make such a request, PACE will cover the cost of storing this data until July 2024, then delete anything that has not been requested.
All data left on PACE by faculty who departed the Institute after July 1, 2021, will follow the Data Retention Guidelines. Under these guidelines, the faculty member’s former school will be responsible for the data and the cost of storing it on PACE, relocating it to another storage system, or determining it can be deleted while complying with any relevant regulations and contracts. The 1 TB provided to each school at no charge on Phoenix may be used to store these files. Schools also have the option of purchasing PACE Archive storage, which is designed for long-term retention of data that does not need to be used regularly on PACE compute clusters.

PACE clusters are available to all GT Faculty, staff, students, and external collaborators who have been granted access by an Authorized Requester, namely a member of the faculty (PI) or someone designated by the PI. Authorized requests must be sent to pace-support@oit.gatech.edu.
PACE clusters are a campus resource subject to the Georgia Tech Cyber Security Policies. By using a PACE system, you acknowledge and consent to these terms:
- This computer system is the property of Georgia Institute of Technology. Any user of this system must comply with all Institute and Board of Regents policies, including the Acceptable Use Policy (AUP), Data Privacy Policy (DPP) and Cyber Security Policy (CSP), see http://b.gatech.edu/it-policies. Users should have no expectation of privacy, as any and all files on this system may be intercepted, monitored, copied, inspected, and/or disclosed to authorized personnel in order to meet institute obligations.

Users can continue to access PACE after their status have changed (e.g. graduation, new research group, end of collaboration, etc) if approved by their PI and they have an active GT account that allows them to connect to VPN. Users who no longer have access to VPN can be provided with continued access to PACE after the following steps:
1. Find a sponsor with active GT credentials (generally, the PI), who can open them a guest account from passport
2. The PI should send pace-support@oit.gatech.edu a request, including the old and new (guest) usernames. If they need existing data migrated to the new account, this should be requested specifically in the ticket.
PACE will then create a new account using the guest credentials and migrate the files if requested. Ideally, the user will not see any differences in charge accounts or files, other than the changed username.
The GT sponsor hosting the guest account(s) assumes all responsibility for the users and their conformance to the GT and PACE usage policies. These accounts can be extended as needed by the GT sponsor from passport.