How to monitor, manage, and constrain users of an ACCESS instructional allocation

ACCESS Forums
1

I’m helping a colleague think about use of ACCESS via an instructional allocation for a class, in particular use of GPU resources.

We’re not sure if there are ways to avoid having a small number of students use up all the credits (either accidentally or not). Is there any way to limit usage on a per-user basis?

If not, are there best practices for monitoring usage regularly or flagging problematic resource usage?

I’ve looked through the ACCESS documentation some but so far had no luck in finding anything particularly helpful.

We’re not yet sure if this would be using Jetstream GPUs or GPUs on an HPC system like Bridges-2.

-Chris Paciorek

Adjunct Professor, Research Computing Consultant
Department of Statistics
UC Berkeley

2

I don’t believe there is a way to limit individual users. We have this question at our site regarding ACCESS users, particularly we don’t want them to accidentally burn down whatever trial allocation we give them as part of our Campus Champion allocation.

My approach is to hold credits in reserve for the particular allocation, and meter it out in smaller doses. That way if a user or set of users get too crazy we can staunch the bleeding before the entire allocation is used up. This is not a terribly efficient approach, but it does keep us from losing an entire allocation to an oops.

3

I do think your best shot here is to get a jet stream allocation and do the following:

  • You could set up virtual machines
  • Asigned a number of students per virtual machine
  • Monitor the virtual machine usage (You could do it manually or use a monitoring software)

Alternatively,

  • Deploy a Kubernetes cluster on your allocation
  • Setup jupyterhub on top of the kubernetes cluster
  • At confuguration, decide how much vGPU, memory, and storage each user can have access to

I will recommend to use any of the above options for understanding the fundamentals of computing. No intensive computations. If there is a final project associated with the class, maybe get a different setup or have the students get their allocations with you as PI, this will ensure your student not only learn how to compute but actually use the skills to solve problems.