Comet early-access users

Dear

As you have expressed interest in being either an early-access user or a Beta tester for Comet, we are writing to let you know that we have finally completed Acceptance testing. The system has proven stable and all of the tested software features (Slurm, Open OnDemand, Containers etc) work repeatably. This means we are ready to commence Alpha testing.

By Alpha testing, we mean that a select group of users will perform very free-form, unsupported testing with the understanding that all work will be wiped before we go into production - you are free to try any of your own code, run any of the installed applications and generally make use of any available resources. However, there are further restrictions/limitations, including:

* You will not be available to access any of your existing Rocket groups
* You will not have access to any per-project data directories (e.g. /nobackup/proj/NAME), and will share a common 'test' folder
* You cannot register further members of your teams
* The system will be subject to ongoing changes which may mean that your work / jobs / processing may be interrupted - it is therefore unsuitable for running production work
* We will not accept feature change requests or requests for additional software packages during this period
* Not all software will be installed (e.g. Docker and some additional software packages are still being worked on), but most common/core software is available

We must be very clear that we (RSE) cannot offer tech support during this period, beyond getting you logged in, as we are still heavily occupied by ongoing integration work to take Comet from a prototype to a fully working production system.

While Alpha testing goes on, we will be developing and setting up the management tools to allow accounting, billing, project creation and maintenance so that the Beta testing phase will run as in production, with separate projects. During Beta testing we will test project creation and user management, project migration from Rocket and billing for resource usage, again with the understanding that everything is 'at risk' until we finally go into production mode. The later Beta testing phase will be much more representative of the full production facility.

If you are interested in helping us with the Alpha testing phase and using the available resources prior to Beta testing, please email us at hpc.researchcomputing@newcastle.ac.uk.

If you wish, you may elect to swap out your invitation to the early access Alpha testing phase for an alternate academic member of staff / RA / RSE or similar, but we cannot extend the list of invitees at this point.

If you want to find out more about early access to Comet, we have further details for you here:
* https://hpc.researchcomputing.ncl.ac.uk/dokuwiki/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=advanced:comet_alpha_testers

Finally, if you have not studied the information previously, we would like to point you to the new HPC Portal and documentation material created specifically to support Comet and future HPC facilities:
* https://hpc.researchcomputing.ncl.ac.uk

Kind Regards,
John Snowdon, Jannetta Steyn, Carol Booth

RSE-HPC Support Team
hpc.researchcomputing@newcastle.ac.uk

First, read the email invitation thoroughly - if you have questions about the Comet facility they can likely be answered by a section in our new HPC Support wiki:

• https://hpc.researchcomputing.ncl.ac.uk/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=start

If you have read and understood the invite, then reply to the email and we will send you instructions which detail:

• How to log in via SSH (on or off Campus) or web browser to Comet
• How to submit problem or experience reports
• What we expect the next steps to be (moving to Beta testing)

All of the core HPC functionality is in place and has been well tested. We also have a number of new features not previously available on University HPC facilities before:

• Fully working Slurm scheduler with multiple partitions
• Two login nodes (SSH cometlogin01.comet.hpc.ncl.ac.uk and cometlogin02.comet.hpc.ncl.ac.uk)
• Full access to both free and paid Slurm resources
• Full access to all GPU resources
• Full access to interactive applications via our new interactive Open OnDemand service (including, initially Linux X11 desktop, Matlab, Jupyter, and R Studio) using a standard web browser from any internet connected device
• Create and run Apptainer and Podman containers (but not Docker at this time, yet)
• More than 1100 software modules (use module avail)

Before accepting the invitation to get early access to Comet, please read and understand the restrictions which are in place.

• To obtain SSH access, you must log in to unix.ncl.ac.uk first - this will change as we move to Beta testing
• High-availability is not available (e.g. a simple hostname such as comet.hpc.ncl.ac.uk) - you must login directly one login node or other; this will be resolved prior to Beta testing & migration of Rocket projects
• Docker is not yet available
• Full set of software not yet installed
• Requests for additional software will not be accepted during this period
• You will be a member of a single shared test group (e.g. comettestgroup1)
• You will have access to a single shared data directory (e.g. /nobackup/proj/comettestgroup1)
• No weekly/monthly resource reports or billing statements in this HPC portal
• No registration of additional users / team members via the HPC portal (we no longer use Groups.ncl.ac.uk)
• Any work you do will be accessible by other testers and may be deleted at any time if we need to make any fundamental system changes (unlikely - but an outside possibility)
• We will ask Alpha testers to record their experiences and expect that you will report any errors or inconsistent behaviour you encounter
• Not suitable for production work due to possibility of system downtime or configuration changes
• All files, data, code and access will be removed at the end of the Alpha testing period - all users will then be expected to take and pass the HPC Driving test subsequent to Beta testing sign-up.

We would like to request that all feedback / bugs / experiences during your early-access use of system to be submitted as issues to the Comet Early Access Github repository:

• https://github.com/Newcastle-University-HPC/Comet_EarlyAccess_Testing

Tickets/emails set to ITServicedesk / NUService relating to Alpha testing will not be actioned.

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