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Additional Resource Requests§

We recognise that researchers may sometimes require a higher throughput of work than it is possible to achieve with free ‘fair share’ usage of Myriad and Kathleen. There a couple of ways of obtaining additional Myriad resources beyond this fair share:

Make a special request to the CRAG for free access to additional resources§

Users who wish to request additional resources or reserve resources beyond those provided can complete the additional resource request form in collaboration with your supervisor or the project's principal investigator. This includes requests for increased storage quotas. Please read the Deletion policy below as data will be deleted if these expire.

The completed form should be sent to the Research Computing Platforms team at rc-support@ucl.ac.uk, for technical review. If successful, your case will be presented to the CRAG for consideration at the next meeting of the Group. The CRAG meets monthly, usually on the second Tuesday of the month, and users will be informed of the Group’s decision as soon as possible after their next meeting.

Note that an application to the CRAG for additional resources is only likely to be approved if the impact on other users is not deemed to be significant, or of long duration.

Examples of requests§

  • Increased Scratch quota - tell us how much, for what purpose and how long you'll need it. Also tell us in brief your plan for removal of the data once your quota increase ends.
    • Once implemented, gquota (Myriad) or lquota (Kathleen) will show the new quota.
  • Longer wallclock limit
    • Consider whether you can checkpoint and restart your job: that is, write out everything that you need for a second job to begin where the previous one finished. Running multiple shorter jobs one after the other is more robust since if anything goes wrong you lose less work. If this is not possible for your jobs, explain why.
    • Please note that we cannot guarantee that longer jobs will not be interrupted by planned outages or maintenance periods. We try not to, but sometimes it is unavoidable.
    • Include details on what resources one job is likely to require, how many of those jobs you expect to need to run, and over what time period you'll need access to longer jobs.
    • If granted, you will be given access to the crag5day project for example, and by adding #$ -P crag5day to your jobscript you will be able to request a longer wallclock time than usual for that job.

Request hosting of shared project spaces or datasets§

We have provision for hosting project spaces/shared spaces/datasets for users on Myriad. These can be spaces or datasets that are freely accessible by all users, or ones limited to groups.

Shared project spaces/hosted datasets:

  • Will not be backed up.
  • Must have a named primary contact.
  • Must be reapplied for every 12 months to make sure they are still current and required.
  • Will have an associated quota.
  • Will be removed when renewal lapses (notice will be given).

To apply for a hosted dataset, please send this form to rc-support@ucl.ac.uk.

Deletion policy for increased quota and shared spaces§

When your quota or space is due to expire, we will send reminders via MyServices (so you should get an email notification but also have a notification viewable in there) on this schedule:

  • 1 month before expiry
  • 2 weeks before expiry
  • 1 week before expiry
  • Day of expiry
  • 1 month after expiry

(If you renew, you won't get the additional reminders).

If it is a shared space with an associated group, notifications will also be sent to the members of the group, in case the person in charge of it left and ownership needs to change.

On the day of expiry, if we have heard nothing from you and you are still using the space your quota will be set back to normal so new files cannot be created. If it was a personal quota we will also prevent you from submitting new jobs since they would fail. Your data will remain on Myriad at this point so you can still copy it off and delete it.

One month after expiry if it was a personal quota and you are still over quota we will move all of your home and Scratch data onto another location. If it was a shared space and still contains data we will move all the contents of the space to another location.

We will keep the data for two months more.

If we still hear nothing from you during these two months, we will delete all the data (three months after the expiry date).

Please do consider this if you are going to be away from UCL for some period of time - you can contact us in advance of the quota or space expiring.

To summarise:

  • Day of expiry: quota set back to normal; job submission prevented if a personal quota.
  • One month after quota expiry:
    • If personal quota: all your home and Scratch data moved to a third location
    • If shared space, shared data moved to a third location
  • Three months after quota expiry: all data deleted from the third location.

Purchase dedicated compute nodes or priority cycles on Myriad§

Researchers may purchase additional resources to be used as part of the Myriad High Performance Computing cluster if the free service does not meet their needs. See Paid-for resources: Purchasing in Myriad for details.

Further information§

For further advice or information on future hardware options, please contact rc-support@ucl.ac.uk.