HPC Policies

The policies and procedures governing access to and usage of the shared NYU HPC clusters managed and hosted by NYU IT have been approved by the Research Technology Faculty Advisory Board. These policies are necessary to ensure that the resources are equitably shared, properly used, and effective in supporting the needs of all researchers.

Contact information

Your NYU email account is the HPC official means of communication. All HPC announcements and communication about downtime, upgrades, etc., will be sent to the account holder's NetID-associated email (NetID@nyu.edu). It is each account owner's responsibility to read these correspondences.

Monthly Maintenance Window

To provide the best possible service, IT must regularly update and perform routine maintenance on its systems and networks. Some of these activities require that the affected systems and networks be shut down. While this work is essential, we also recognize that it presents an inconvenience. To enable those who use these systems to better plan for maintenance, we have guidelines for scheduling routine maintenance and upgrades to the HPC clusters as described below.

A MONTHLY SCHEDULED MAINTENANCE OF UP TO 12 HOURS WILL BE TAKEN, IF NEEDED, BEGINNING AT 8AM ON THE FIRST MONDAY OF EACH MONTH

Major scheduled maintenance and upgrade activities will take place, if needed, once per month. These will be scheduled for the first Monday of each month at 8am to noon to start these scheduled maintenance and upgrade activities. The maintenance period may often be brief or not used at all, but can last up to 12 hours if this amount of time is needed to complete the work.

We have chosen early morning on the first Monday of each month for our maintenance work as it has been the time period during the week which has low usage on our clusters.

A notification will be sent to all HPC account holders announcing any scheduled maintenance work in advance.

A WEEKLY SCHEDULED MAINTENANCE OF UP TO FOUR HOURS (MONDAY 8 AM to NOON) MAY BE USED TO ADDRESS SMALLER MAINTENANCE AND UPGRADE NEEDS.

This time will not be used if not needed.

Storage Quotas and Policies

Each individual user is assigned a standard storage quota (a limit on usage). Researchers who use more than their quota will be blocked from submitting jobs or using additional resources until they clean their file space and reduce their usage. The table below shows, for every storage space, the standard storage quotas for individual accounts and the cost to expand quotas beyond the standard quota.

For details on quotas, see the HPC Storage Best Practices page. Storage policies are described under the Data Management page.

Group Quotas

An HPC sponsor may request that their quota and the quotas of their research group be combined to create a single larger space. Some conditions:

The sponsor's account will hold the full quota and each individual's quota will be set to 0.

Requests will be considered by HPC team and assessed by evaluating the need for it and availability.

To apply for a group quota please use the form at this link.   You will receive a response to your request within 1 week.

Automatic File Deletion Policy

The table below describes the policy concerning the automatic deletion of files.

HPC Hosting and Equipment Life Cycle Policy

NYU IT data centers are secure, state-of-the-art facilities with 24/7 monitoring and redundant AC and power. All HPC equipment in IT data centers are taken out of service after 4 years. If used/refurbished equipment is put into the data center, this is measured from the original manufacture date rather than the date it was put into the data center.

Allocation of space and other scarce resources in IT facilities is determined on a case by case basis. All requests to qualify for this service and/or to extend the management life of a cluster beyond 4 years (for a maximum of 1 additional year) must be approved by the Research Faculty Advisory Group.  Requests should be emailed to hpc@nyu.edu. For requests to extend beyond 4 years up to 1 additional year should include the following: