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Research IT Policies and Rules

Research IT (formerly TCHPC) Policies are detailed on the following pages:

Policy Page Description
Access Policies Overview of which Research IT Resources are available to various Research Groups and Higher Education Institutes, and the College and Research IT Policies for gaining access to these resources.
Account Policies An overview of Research IT account policies.
Acknowledgement Policies A requirement of usage of Research IT Resources is acknowledgement of the Funding Agencies which have provided the resources.
Cluster Scheduling Policies An overview of the various queuing/scheduling policies which are in place on Research IT clusters.
Cookie Statement A description of how Cookies are used in our websites.
Data Management Policies An overview of how disk space is allocated per project group, disk quotas, how project lifetimes affect data which is stored on Research IT systems, and notes about TCD data policies and good research practices.
Systems Administration Policies A note on systems administration tasks which may occasionally be undertaken in order to preserve system stability and functionality.

Access Policies

Access to Research IT resources is subject to Trinity College’s policies and terms & conditions. These are available at https://www.tcd.ie/itservices/about/policies-terms-and-support-statements/

The following rules also apply

Account Policies

Access to Research IT services is not automatically setup. Researchers must apply for an account with Research IT.

An account on any RIT systems may only be used by the authorized account holder.

An account will be setup for a fixed time period, but a maximum of one year before details verification is required.

Research IT accounts are set to automatically expire after a certain period. This is to ensure only active accounts exist on our systems and stale accounts are removed. In advance of the expiration date account holders will be emailed to advise their account will expire. It is the account holders responsibility to request an account extension. To request an account extension please email ops@tchpc.tcd.ie.

Research IT maintains it’s own authentication system which is separate from the authentication system used to login to most Trinity services such as email, computers in offices and labs, etc. This means that your Research IT credentials can be different from your Trinity credentials. Research IT need an authentication system separate from the usual Trinity one to facilitate collaborators from non Trinity institutions who are collaborating with Trinity Researchers.

Who is eligible for an account on Research IT systems

Research IT operates High End Computing facilities for general use by research staff & postgraduate students in Trinity College. Two of these system have been funded such that general access is also available to the broader Irish research community based in the HEI’s. Some computational resources have been funded through specific research projects for the use of specific groups or consortia - access to these resources is restricted.

Undergraduate students

Undergraduate students don’t automatically need access to our systems, usually it is in the context of a final year or summer project, etc. Undergraduates who request Research IT accounts will have to have the support of a Trinity academic supervisor to get access.

Non-TCD Staff/Student additional requirements

Note: If you are not a TCD staff member or student you will also need to submit a third party access form, this form can be found on the application page.

Data Protection

Personal data collected to set-up your account will not be disseminated to third parties without your permission and will only be used by staff at the Centre to comply with our obligations.

A precondition to using our systems and/or services is that you agree to allowing us to publish and disseminate an abstract of your work and any resulting publications that are enabled by these systems and/or services and make this information available to our funders and College authorities.

If you have any queries about our data protection policies please contact us.

Acknowledgement of usage of Research IT (RIT) Resources

Please note that all publications (journals, theses, articles etc) describing work undertaken which has used or benefited from Research IT Resources must acknowledge the relevant funding agencies and Research IT / TCHPC (see more below for a per-cluster breakdown).

In particular, Research IT Resources include:

Please use the following acknowledgement line

This work was supported by RIT (Research IT, Trinity College Dublin).

Additional Acknowledgement Requirements per Cluster

Lonsdale

In addition to RIT, all publications must acknowledge SFI (Science Foundation Ireland).

Please use the following acknowledgement line:

All calculations were performed on the Lonsdale cluster maintained by the Trinity Centre for High Performance Computing. This cluster was funded through grants from Science Foundation Ireland.

Parsons

In addition to RIT, all publications must acknowledge SFI (Science Foundation Ireland).

Please use the following acknowledgement line:

All calculations were performed on the Parsons cluster maintained by the Trinity Centre for High Performance Computing. This cluster was funded through grants from Science Foundation Ireland.

Kelvin

In addition to RIT, all publications must acknowledge e-INIS (the Irish National e-Infrastructure).

Please use the following acknowledgement line:

All calculations were performed on the Kelvin cluster maintained by the Trinity Centre for High Performance Computing. This cluster was funded through grants from the Higher Education Authority, through its PRTLI program.

Boyle

In addition to RIT, all publications must acknowledge the ERC (European Research Council) and SFI (Science Foundation Ireland).

Please use the following acknowledgement line:

All calculations were performed on the Boyle cluster maintained by the Trinity Centre for High Performance Computing. This cluster was funded through grants from the European Research Council and Science Foundation Ireland.

Tinney

In addition to RIT, all publications must acknowledge SFI (Science Foundation Ireland).

Please use the following acknowledgement line:

All calculations were performed on the Tinney cluster maintained by the Trinity Centre for High Performance Computing (Research IT). This cluster is funded form a Grant from Science Foundation Ireland under Grant number 18/FRL/6188.

astro01

In addition to RIT, all publications must acknowledge the Trinity College Dublin School of Physics and IRC (Irish Research Council) grant award IRCLA/2022/3788.

Please use the following acknowledgement line:

All calculations were performed on the astro01 system maintained by the Trinity Centre for High Performance Computing (Research IT). This system is co-funded by the School of Physics and by the Irish Research Council grant award IRCLA/2022/3788.

Logos

If you require logos for publications please contact us and we will send you a copy of the logos.

Cluster Scheduling Policies

Cluster Full Resource Allocation Fair Share Closed Access
Crusher No No Yes
Lonsdale Yes Yes No
Kelvin Yes Yes No
Parsons No Yes Yes
TCIN No No Yes
Seagull No Yes Yes
Pople No Yes Yes
Dalton No Yes Yes
Boyle No Yes Yes
Boole No Yes Yes

Full Resource Allocation means that jobs will only be run if they have a valid job ‘account code’ or ‘project code’ with a positive balance of available hours. See our Resource Allocation pages for details on how to apply for a resource allocation

Fair Share means that the more you use the cluster, the lower your relative priority will become. This allows new users and/or users who have not used much time recently to go higher up the queue, and allows a ‘fair’ usage of the cluster.

Closed Access means that only certain groups have access to the system. See our Access Policies for more.

General Queuing Configurations

For Kelvin and Lonsdale each cluster has two main queues/partitions:

  1. A debug partition, with a small number of nodes and a short wall-time. This is to be used for small test or development runs. The short wall-time enables a very quick turn-around, and faster access.

  2. A compute partition, which comprises the bulk of the cluster. The maximum wall-time will be a number of days (between 2 and 4, depending on the specific cluster). Most jobs should be submitted here.

Please refer to sinfo on each cluster for more specific limits and available resources. See this page for more on Slurm commands.

Most other clusters only have one compute partition. Some other clusters, such as Parsons and Boole, have additional partitions.

Data Management Policy

From June 2011, Research IT (RIT) have implemented a new set of data management policies. This allows us to cleanly remove old data from the system.

All existing and new users must read and comply with the policies below, and in particular should take note of all data deletion policies for user and group directories.

RIT data storage facilities are not available for long-term data storage - they are made available for the lifetime of user and group projects, and data will be deleted upon user and project expiration.

Current Filesystem Structure

User Home Directories available from Kelvin, Lonsdale and Parsons

User home directories are stored on the global /home partition.

In order to enable more efficient data management processes and provide disaster recovery and snapshot services:

Group Project Directories available from Kelvin, Lonsdale and Parsons

Shared group project files are stored on the global /projects partition:

On the /projects partition:

Users must also comply with the following policies and guidelines

Procedure for retrieving files/data for users who have left TCD

If you had files stored on RIT servers and have now left Trinity but wish to access those files (e.g. if you have moved to another institute, but are still collaborating with groups within Trinity) then further to requirements from the College’s Good Research Practice document, we will need you to arrange:

  1. Signoff from your former Head of School & Research Institute before we can process this request.

  2. An undertaking from all parties that the data can cleanly be transferred off campus and that the data does not contain medical, confidential, commercially sensitive, sensitive personal data or records of any form or description.

Systems Administration Policies

Please note the following Systems Administration Policies which may have an impact on users:

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