Self-Signup for Accounts

Navigate to OSC Client Portal

Click the "Sign Up" button. The user registration page will be displayed. Please follow the instructions on the page and also fill it out as completely as possible.

If your PI has invited you to their project or has given you an access code to the project. Please enter that information in the correct box. If the project code is provided, you will be added to the project after the Project Admin accepts your request. If both the project code and corresponding access code (which is created by Project Admin as a time-limited code) are provided, you will be added to the project immediately once the signup is completed successfully. 

Once all required information is entered, hit the save button to submit the registration.

Once the submission is processed, the web page will display the following page explaining that an email from OSC will be sent to the email address used during registration with further instructions for completing the sign-up process.

Find the email that was sent from OSC and click the link to verify the email address used (link text below):

I verfiy my email address is johndoe@osu.edu

The link redirects to a page for selecting an institution. Use the search box to find the appropriate institution.

If, while creating an account, the proper institution cannot be found in the 'Academic Institution' search box, then complete the form below the search box.

Next, A web page will be displayed with the OSC terms of use. Please read them and click that "I Agree" to agree to the terms of use.

A webpage will be displayed to continue to the creation of an OSC Username and Password.

Create a username and password according to the constraints listed on the page.

Once  a username and password is created and saved there is a redirect back to the login page. The login page will also have a pop up stating that the username and password have been successfully created.

Client portal password and username options

As always, Visit the OSC Client Portal website

Change password while already logged in

Click ‘Change Password’ from the dropdown menu of in the upper-right corner where the full name of the user is shown.

A successful password change redirects back to the dashboard page. There is also a message displayed confirming the change and providing other information.

Reset an expired or forgotten password

From the Login page, click the ‘Forgot your password?’ link.

Enter a valid username and click the ‘Submit’ button. An email with a link to set a new password will be sent to the email address associated with that username.

Obtain OSC usernames

To obtain all the usernames associated with an email address, click 'Forgot your username?' and enter a valid email address.

This will send an email containing all the associated usernames with the email address entered.

There are different requirements for being able to charge OSC usage towards a grant. This page aims to provide general guidelines, but actual requirements may be different. Contact OSC help if there are specific questions/needs.

Adding grant information

First, the grant information should be added to a user's profile. Login into my.osc.edu and visit the Contact Profile page for the account by clicking the name of the account in the upper-right corner of the page and selecting Edit My Profile.

On this page, click the button Funding, then on the next page click Add New Contact Funding. Enter the appropriate information for the grant and save it.

If a specific funding source is not available, a new one can be created using Individual -> Funding -> Funding Sources, then select Request New Funding Source. This will inform OSC staff to add the new funding source as an option once reviewed.

Use job names

When submitting jobs, make sure to designate the job name to reflect which grant this job applies to.

One can specify the job name at submission time: $ sbatch -J grant_1234 job.sh

Or add a line to the job script: #SBATCH -J grant_1234

This name will be saved with the job record, associating it with the grant specified.

Add a Grant per project

Some grants have strict requirements, and the best way to associate usage for that grant is with a single project, separate from other OSC project's usage. This way, every job associated with a specific project code e.g. PAS1234, will also be implicitly associated with a specific grant.

Visit the project details page for the project that should have grant information added. Click the button External Funding. Select the appropriate grant which should have been added to the PI's profile as in the Adding grant information section above, and click the Add to this project button.

It is useful to take a look at usage over periods of time and calculate overall usage at osc. This page explains how to do this using the HPC Job Activity tool in my.osc.edu

After logging into the client portal, navigate to Individual -> HPC Job Activity.

Enter the appropriate dates:

min date: 01 July 2020
max date: current date (or other end date)

Once the dates are entered, the click the button Refresh Report.

It will then produce a table with all the job records within that timeframe.

Group the records together

Select Actions -> Group by

In the drop-down box with text - Select Group by Column - , select Project.
Directly under this, click Add Group by Column and select Charge Type.

Next, use the Sum function with the Dollar Charge column.

Finally, select a format mask and check the sum box on the end of the row.

See the following screenshot to verify the setup:

Export reports

The reports created above can also be saved locally as a csv. Select Actions -> Download and click the available format to download.

Manage users on a project

The PI of a project can manage the users on their projects. This includes inviting, adding and removing users to the project as well as increasing a user's privileges on a project so that they can assist with the management of it.

To manage a project, navigate to Project -> List Projects and select the blue button on the left of the appropriate project.

Adding users

Users can be added to the project by visiting the project details page and selecting the Project Users button. If the user already has an OSC account, then go to Current Project Members -> Add Project User and search them by display name or username. If the user does not have an OSC account, then they can be sent an invitation to sign up for an account and be immediately added to the project by going to Member Invitations -> Invite New User.

Approving users

A user may request access to a project, which then needs approved by the PI or a project admin. Navigate to the project details page and select the Project Users button. Expand Current Project Members. Click the blue button next to a username that shows PI approved as no. Set to yes and save. The user should now be approved as a member of the project.

Setup project access number

A user can automatically add themselves to a project if they have the project code and a valid project access number.

The PI or project admin can create a project access number from the project details page using the project access number section and clicking the 'add/replace' button.

The project access number default to be valid only for 14 days. It can be set for less, but 14 is the maximum.

Users may either enter this project access number at sign up or if they already have an account, login and navigate to Project -> Project Access Request.

Invite/add multiple users using a csv file

Multiple users can be added or invited to a project using a csv file that is formatted properly. The csv file should have three columns and at least 2 rows, one for the header info and another for data. See the example below for the raw text of a proper csv file:

NAME_FIRST,NAME_LAST,EMAIL_ADDR
Myfirstname,Mylastname,myemailaddress@domain.com

Upload the file and verify the data after stepping through the process. After complete, the current invitations and project members can be viewed in Member Invitations and Current Project Members respectively.

The invitation links are valid for 72 hours. If a link has expired, it will show in the show in the table and you can resend.

If you need to edit the email address, for example, you can view the table and 'reset' the form. 

A complete sign up with result in username appearing in your Current Project Members table. 

Removing users

Users can be removed by visiting the project details page and clicking Project Users -> Current Project Members and clicking the blue button left of the username in the list. Select Remove. Many users can be removed more easily by activating the red Enable Quick Removal/Approval button while in the Current Project Members section. There will then be a new column with a symbol. Click the  icon to delete the user instantly.

Invitations can also be deleted by navigating to Member Invitations and selecting the icon on the left of the invite.

Manage user roles

Users can be assigned an admin role on a project by the PI and other project admins. A user can be assigned this role by navigating to the project details page and clicking Project Users -> Administrative Roles -> Add User Role. The only two roles that should be used are Project, Admin Access and Project, No Admin Notifications. Both roles allow a normal user to manage the project as if they were the PI. This allows them to renew the project and manage all users on it.

OSC offers the use of budgets to limit the amount of charges incurred on projects.

Active budget

Once a budget has been approved, it (and the project it was requested from) becomes active. Having an active project allows users on that project to submit batch jobs to use OSC resources.

Using a budget

As usage is accrued on a project, the remaining budget value seen on the project details page will decrease. Once the value of the remaining budget is zero or less, then the project will be restricted and that project can longer be used to submit batch jobs for OSC resources.

Project storage also reduces the remaining budget daily. Project storage is any amount of storage requested by the PI or project admin and is located in either /fs/project or /fs/ess directories.

Budgets are a Soft limit

A budget is not going to limit incurred charges to exactly the amount set. Depending on the situation, it could be over by a certain amount. If there are questions/concerns with a budget not correctly limiting charges at OSC, please contact OSC Help.

Once per day operations

The remaing budget amount is not a real-time representation. Completed jobs are uploaded to the client portal once per day. If one looked at their remaining budget and saw $5 was left, but a job that was completed and not yet uploaded to client used $4 worth of resources, then the actual remaining budget should be $1. The same goes for jobs which are still running, except it is unknown how much a running job will reduce the remaining budget by.

Shortly after job records are uploaded to client portal, this adjusts each projects remaining balance based on usage. At this time, if a remaining budget was zero or less, then the project will become restricted and no more jobs can be submitted using that project code.

Storage charges

The charges incurred by project storage are not affected by a project becoming restricted.

Edit profile

Profile information can be changed by logging in with valid osc credentials to the OSC client portal and navigating to the profile page by clicking the display name in the upper right corner of the page and selecting Edit my profile.

On that page will be displayed information saved for that profile. Some of this information can be freely edited or changed, but other information can only be updated by an OSC admin, such as the institution. Please contact OSC help if there is incorrect information which is not editable.

Email address change

If trying to update an email address, one will need to wait to receive an email and verify the email address change before it will take effect.

PI status

If one already has an OSC account and wants to request PI status so that they can create their own project at OSC, then it can be done on the contact profile page.

Look for the Special Access Request section, select the checkbox for 'I am an eligible PI' and upload a recent CV document. This will submit a request to OSC staff to review your profile and provide the PI status to your account.

Publications and Funding

There are two buttons for Publications and Funding. The Publications button will bring up a page on which one can manage bibliographic information about publications to reference in account requests or renewals. The Funding button will bring up a page on which one can record funding from other sources to also reference in account requests or renewals.

Information review

Contact information should be verified yearly.

Once a year, after logging into the client portal, a user will be redirected to a contact verification page where any out-of-date or incorrect profile information should be updated accordingly.

MyOSC now supports multi-factor authentication (MFA).

User opt-in

Users can now opt-in to using multi-factor authentication in MyOSC.

On a user's profile page, there will be a button enable duo mfa.

There will be an error displayed with the text:

One must log out of myosc, then log back in to continue the duo mfa enrollment process where device information can be entered and saved. The next time logging into OSC systems, a duo push will be required to be completed.

Removing MFA

If an osc account is not required to use MFA, then it can be disabled at any time.

Navigate to your profile page in myosc, then select duo settings and click the Disable Duo MFA button.

Project requires MFA

There is also a flag that can be set on a per-project basis, which will require all users on that project to use MFA.

Contact us at OSC Help if you would this enabled on a project.

Projects at OSC should be reviewed, at least annually, and OSC staff should be kept up to date on any data with special restrictions being stored at OSC.

Project annual review

Projects at OSC are required to be reviewed annually. This check will be for making sure that only accounts which need to use the project are members of the project, and that all users with admin roles still need that role. Furthermore, it is for checking that the project has an appropriate special property for the data being stored.

You will be prompted upon log in at MyOSC to verify. This will occur 365 days after your last project verification.

If you'd like to verify early, you can do so from the Project Details > Project Users. Now you are on the Manage Project Users table and there is a button to "Verify Project Members and Admins."

Projects with special data

If a project is storing data that has special restrictions on whom can access that data, then OSC staff should be made aware of this.

The project may be categorized as a protected data project, or the special restrictions could be simpler and just require permissions to be kept reasonably secure (e.g. NIH genomic data policy).

In both cases, the project should be labeled with a special property to explicitly show that data with special restrictions are being stored.

OSC client portal allows users to manage their projects.

Creating a new project

Any user with the Primary Investigator (PI) role can request a new project in the client portal. Using the navigation bar, select Project, Create a new project. Fill in the required information. See more details on these options below.

Project types

Depending on the project type selected here, it will alter how budgets are approved.

The project types academic, commercial, and government/non-profit projects will use the approval process set up by the institution of the PI requesting the project. This could involve waiting on a fiscal approver to review the request, or having the request automatically approved.

The classroom project type will be routed to OSC staff for approval since all usage under a classroom project is fully discounted so that no charges are incurred by the PI. Remember that a syllabus is required for classroom projects to be approved.

Charge accounts

A PI can choose to create a new charge account or select an existing one when creating a new project.

See "Charge accounts overview" section near the bottom of this page for more information on creating a new charge account.

Use the drop-down box to select an existing charge account. If there is a credit already added to an existing charge account, then the text '(credit: <dollar-amount>)' will show next to the charge account name.

For PI associated with Ohio academic institutions, the annual Ohio academic credit of $1,000 will be added automatically to the charge account selected here, if the credit has not already been added. The credit will be added after the first budget of the fiscal year is approved.

The charge account is important because it is used for credits (such as the annual credit available to Ohio Academics). Many projects can be grouped under a single charge account, which also means many projects can take advantage of that charge account's credits as well.

Special properties

Special properties can currently only be added by OSC staff.

If the project will contain sensitive data such as PHI (HIPAA related), ITAR, etc, then contact OSC to use the protected data service which provides controls to keep data secure.

Misc fields

• Project title
• Field of science

Creating a budget

After entering the required information on the project creation page, a budget can be created.

For projects that are already created, head to the project details page and click the Create new budget button, and go through the budget creation process again.

Budgets are used to constrain spending in a fiscal year, but bills are based on service type and utilization. Budgets can be replaced at any time.

Timeframe

First, select the timeframe that the budget should be created for.

The timeframe can either be for this fiscal year or the next fiscal year.

A fiscal year is from July 1st to June 30th the next calendar year.

Budget type

There are two types of available budgets, limited and unlimited.

Limited budgets are used for projects that want to put a maximum on the charges that can be incurred. This is useful for a PI that creates a new project, receives the $1,000 annual credit, then sets a limited budget of $1,000.

Unlimited budgets are for projects that will not have a spending limit.

To create a limited budget, answer yes to 'Do you want to set a dollar budget?'. For an unlimited budget, select no.

If you have a restricted project you want to re-use, you would submit the budget request under that project code.

Org Fiscal Reference text field and checkbox

There are two fields that may need to be filled in.

The Org Fiscal Reference is an internal accounting field for the project's organization.

For e.g. At Ohio State University, a PI should enter the Purchase Request # here.

The Fiscal Approval checkbox is an option displayed for a PI that can automatically activate a budget without requiring review. It has the PI declare that they have already been approved for spending at OSC.

Submit budget review or activating budget

After filling in budget information, the next page will be different depending on whether the PI's institution has set up a review process at OSC.

If the institution allows PIs to activate their own budget, the PI simply clicks Activate Budget, then the project and budget are both set to active.

If the institution requires a review of the budget, an email will be sent to reviewers. Once the reviewers decide on approving, partially approving (an amount different than the PI's request), or rejecting, the PI will receive a notification of the response.

Storage request

Storage can be requested from the project details page. Look for the button request storage change.

The difference between different storage at OSC is described in available file systems.

Managing projects

Projects that have been created should be managed periodically.

View all projects

To view all projects, even those not submitted for approval and still waiting on approval, navigate to Project, Project List.

View Budgets

Go to the project details page and select the Budgets button to view current and past budgets.

Charge accounts overview

Create a new charge account

PI's can create a charge account, which allows them to group projects together under that charge account.

To create a new charge account, select from navigation bar Charge account, then Create new charge account or select Project, then create new project and leave charge account selection at Generate a new charge account.

See information on the fields below.

Parent charge account

Every charge account created by a PI must have a parent. Either enter the name of the parent if it is known, or clear the parent charge account selection, then click the button View hierarchy, then Collapse all, to show the available parent charge account options.

With the hierarchy view shown, look for the correct parent charge account. For most academic PI's, there may be a "<institution> top-level" charge account that can be selected. There may also be colleges and department charge accounts under the colleges. Select the correct charge account based on your current position.

Contact

Leave the contact as your own user account.

Display name

The title of the charge account being created. Can be useful to provide a summary name for the types of projects that will be created under the charge account.

Submit or save for later

Click the submit button to create the new charge account or save for later button to come back to the charge account later.

View credits

Credits can be viewed at Charge account, then Charge account list.

This will display all charge accounts created by you, and a column for "Total dollars given", which is the total credit available for that charge account.

Questions on what is a budget? What is the credit?

Please see service terms for further explanations or contact oschelp@osc.edu

MyOSC now offers the ability for PIs to view the billing statements of current un-billed usage for their projects.

Login to my.osc.edu and navigate to Project -> Billing Statements.

There are two sections:

Current usage

The current usage section provides information usage charges up to the current day.

These are not final charges, as they may be countered by credits or discounts at the time billing is ran.

Statements

The statement section lets PIs view past statements that will include information about charges including discounts and credits applied for that period.

Interactive reporting of HPC job activity

View job scripts

Creating a job note

In client portal, we provide interactive reporting region with Oracle Application Express (APEX) that allows end users to query data and customize reports. According to ORACLE, this interactive reporting region allows users to

• Customize the layout of the data by choosing the columns they are interested in, applying filters, highlighting, and sorting
• Define breaks, aggregations, different charts, and their own computations
• Create multiple variations of the report and save them as named reports, output to comma-delimited files, and print them to PDF documents

The interactive reporting region are available on different pages in client portal, such as “Individual -> HPC Job Activity”. In this documentation, we will discuss how to query data and customize reports on the HPC Job Activity screen. The discussions here are also applicable to other pages.

The HPC Job Activity page

Column sorting and filtering

Adjust the displayed information in the table

'Search' tool

'Actions' menu

Example: create a chart report of daily HPC jobs by a user

OSC OnDemand provides access to applications on compute nodes through the batch system, without the hassle or performance problems associated with X11 forwarding. To access one, please select an application under "Interactive HPC" from the "Desktop Apps" menu. For more information on each product, please go to its page provided below.

OnDemand provides a web-based File Explorer that can be used to upload and download files to your OSC home directory or project directory, and copy, delete, rename, and edit files.

Here is a tutorial video that gives a overview of OnDemand's file management client's capabilities and how to utilize them.

Here you can see a screen shot of what the main interface looks like.

Navigating

Selecting which File System

By default, the file browser will be looking at your home directory. If you have access to a project space for GPFS directory, you can switch to those by backtracking through the path near the top of the window and selecting the file system you wish to browse. In addition, you can use the "Go To" option in the top menu to type the path you wish to navigate to. Both the directory path and "Go To" button are highlighted in red in the image above.

Switching Folders

On the left side of the screen is a tree view of the directory structure. You can navigate this tree the same way you might on a normal desktop GUI to select the folder you wish to use.

Uploading and Downloading Files

There are several methods to upload files. The first is to simply navigate to the desired destination, and then drag the file from your local desktop or window navigator to the OnDemand window. You can also click the "Upload" button to open a dialog that will allow you to navigate your local computer and select which files you want to upload. This process is highlighted in the image above.

To download files, you must select the file or files you wish to download, and then use the "Download" button. If you select multiple files ("control+click" or "shift+click") or a folder, the server will zip the files up and download a single zip archive to your desktop machine.

File Operations

Most file operations can be accomplished by selecting the file in the main window pane and selecting the desired operation from the main menu.

Viewing and/or Editing a File

The application also includes several built-in file editors. To access these editors and viewers, select the file you wish to view or edit, and select "Edit" from the main menu. This will open up a text editor in a new tab.

OnDemand provides two related job managment tools: one allows you to create and submit jobs via your web browser, and the other allows you to monitor queued and running jobs.

Here is a tutorial video that gives an overview of OnDemand's Job client's capabilities and how to utilize them.

My Jobs

Selecting "My Jobs" in the Jobs menu will open an application that allows you to create new jobs and submit them to the cluster, and inspect the results of jobs submitted via this tool.

New Job

Please following the steps in order to create a job:

1. Create a new job by copying from an existing job template directory (by clicking "+New Job" button under "Listing Jobs") or a previously run job directory (by clicking "+Copy Job" button under "Listing Jobs").
   • If you click the "+New Job" button, you will see the page as below. Select the job template to copy, then click "Create New Job". The template directory will be copied and a new job row will be added to the top of the jobs table on the page titled "Listing Jobs"
2. Select the job, then modify and/or add any files to this job by clicking "Edit Files"
3. Select the job and click "Job Options" to change the cluster, job name, or job script, if necessary
4. At this point, you can submit the job using the green "submit" button from the "My Jobs" page; or return to this job later to modify it further. You can also monitor the job status here. Currently you must reload the page to see job status changes.

Job Management

On the main screen for "My Jobs" you can click on a job to examine it.

Submit Job

If the job has not been submitted, the "submit job" button will be active, and will submit the selected job to the queue.

Stop Job

The "stop" button will allow you to kill a running job.

Delete Job

The "delete" button will allow you to delete a job

Active Jobs

The "Active Jobs" application will show you all of jobs currently in the queue (running or queued), regardless of how the jobs were submitted. You can click the button on top to switch from:

• All jobs from your OSC account
• All jobs from your project/group
• All jobs from OSC users

You can also use "Search" tool to filter jobs based on sytems (oakley or ruby), status (running, queued, or hold), OSC user accout, etc.

Job Inspection

If you click the arrow to the left of each job you can get more information about this job. It also provides the information of each node on which this job is running on, over the duration of the entire job. Clicking on each image expands it to show more information.