User Account Types

NERC offers two types of user accounts: a Principal Investigator (PI) Account and a General User Account. All General Users must be assigned by a PI to their approved project by an active NERC PI account or by delegated manager(s).

Principal Investigator Eligibility Information

• MGHPCC consortium members, whereby they enter into an service agreement with MGHPCC for the NERC services.

• Non-members of MGHPCC can also be PIs of NERC Services, but must also have an active non-member agreement with MGHPCC.

• External research focused institutions will be considered on a case-by-case basis and are subject to an external customer cost structure.

PI accounts are able to request Resource Allocations. A PI account enables a user to log into NERC's computational project space; apply for allocations of NERC resources and grant access to other users; and delegate responsibilities to other collaborators from the same institutions or elsewhere as managers using NERC’s ColdFront interface.

Getting Started

Any faculty, staff, student, and external collaborator must request a user account through the MGHPCC Shared Services (MGHPCC-SS) Account Portal. This is a web-based, single point-of-entry to the NERC system that displays a user welcome page. The welcome page of the account registration site displays instructions on how to register a General User account on NERC, which are shown in the image below:

There are two options: either register for a new account or to manage an existing one. If you are new to NERC and want to register as a new MGHPCC-SS user, click on the "Register for an Account" button. This will redirect you to a new web page which shows details about how to register for a new MGHPCC-SS user account. NERC uses CILogon that supports login either using your Institutional Identity Provider (IdP).

Clicking the "Begin MGHPCC-SS Account Creation Process" button will initiate the account creation process. You will be redirected to a site managed by CILogon where you will select your institutional or commercial identity provider as shown below:

Once selected, you will be redirected to your institutional or commercial identity provider where you will login as shown here:

At the completion of that logon, your browser will be redirected to the MGHPCC-SS Account Management site where you will complete your MGHPCC-SS account creation process.

After successful logon, your browser will redirect back to the MGHPCC-SS Registration Page and ask for review and confirmation of creating your account with fetched information to complete the account creation process.

Very Important

If you don't click the "Create MGHPCC-SS Account" button, your account will not be created! So this is a very important step, to review and also click on the "Create MGHPCC-SS Account" button to save your information.

You can make any corrections that you need and fill in any blank fields i.e. "Research Domain" and then click the "Create MGHPCC-SS Account" button. This will automatically send an email to your email address with a link to validate and confirm your account information.

Once you get an email and click on the provided validation web link, you will make sure that your user account is created and valid by viewing the following page:

Help

If you have an institutional identity, it's preferable that you use that identity to create your MGHPCC-SS account. Institutional identities are vetted by identity management teams and provide a higher level of confidence to resource owners when granting access to resources. You can only link one university account to a MGHPCC-SS account; if you have multiple university accounts you will only be able to link one of those accounts to your MGHPCC-SS account. If at a later date, you want to change which account is connected to your MGHPCC-SS identity you can by contacting help@nerc.mghpcc.org.

How to update and modify your MGHPCC-SS account information?

1. Login your MGHPCC-SS account

2. Click on "Manage Your MGHPCC-SS Account" button

3. Review your currently saved account information, change any fields that require correction or updates and then click on the "Update MGHPCC-SS Account" button.

4. This will send an email to verify your updated account information so check your email address.

5. Confirm and validate the new account details by verifying them by clicking the provided link on your email.

How to request a Principal Investigator (PI) Account?

The process for requesting and obtaining PI Account is relatively simple by filling out this NERC Principal Investigator (PI) Account Request form

Alternatively, PI can request for a Principal Investigator (PI) user account by submitting a new ticket at the NERC's Support Ticketing System (osTicket) under "NERC PI Account Request" option on Help Topic as shown in the image below:

Information

So, once your PI user request is reviewed and approved by NERC's administration staff - you will recieve an email confirmation form NERC's support system i.e. help@nerc.mghpcc.org. You are going to get into NERC's ColdFront resource allocation management portal using the PI user role.

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