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User Onboarding Process Overview

NERC's Research allocations are available to faculty members and researchers, including postdoctoral researchers and students. In order to get access to resources provided by NERC's computational infrastructure, you must first register and obtain a user account.

The overall user flow can be summarized using the following sequence diagram:

NERC user flow

  1. All users including PI need to register to NERC via: https://regapp.mss.mghpcc.org/.

  2. PI will send a request for a Principal Investigator (PI) user account role by submitting: NERC's PI Request Form.

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

    the NERC's Support Ticketing System PI Ticket

    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.

  3. Wait until the PI request gets approved by the NERC's admin.

  4. Once a PI request is approved, PI can add a new project and also search and add user(s) to the project - Other general user(s) can also see the project(s) once they are added to a project via: https://coldfront.mss.mghpcc.org.

  5. PI or project Manager can request resource allocation either NERC (OpenStack) or NERC-OCP (OpenShift) for the newly added project and select which user(s) can use the requested allocation.

    As a new NERC PI for the first time, am I entitled to any credits?

    As a new PI using NERC for the first time, you might wonder if you get any credits. Yes, you'll receive up to $1000 for the first month only. But remember, this credit can not be used in the following months. Also, it does not apply to GPU resource usage.

  6. Wait until the requested resource allocation gets approved by the NERC's admin.

  7. Once approved, PI and the corresponding project users can go to either NERC Openstack horizon web interface: https://stack.nerc.mghpcc.org or NERC OpenShift web console: https://console.apps.shift.nerc.mghpcc.org based on approved Resource Type and they can start using the NERC's resources based on the approved project quotas.