2024-03-11 ACCESS Researcher Advisory Committee - Spring 2024

5 min

Welcome and Call to Order

Chair: Wladimir Lyra, New Mexico State University

5 min

Meeting Logistics

• Website: https://access-ci.org/

• Wiki: ACCESS Researcher Advisory Committee

• Charter: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1SjIW8FVfDcUCfIVF_CVcO0rnk5DLa_f9daIa2xCUUuE/edit#heading=h.xb90631xffqb

• Agenda topic requests

Laura Herriott, Allocations

10 min

Debrief - ACCESS External Advisory Board Meeting

William Lai, Cornell University

Jason Williams, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory

Shared recommendations about cross-track collaborations, website integration opportunities to enhance cohesiveness.

Better cross-coordination sharing of metrics, support, to make sure that researchers get what they need; how do we expand the community to continue to grow beyond the traditional bounds.

Harel: do you as participants, do you have any suggestions as to what it is that we can do or gather to help you the next time you go? Are there such things?

• William - what is not working for you as a researcher or your colleagues on getting on these resources? Who are we advertising to or who are we not advertising to?

Abhishek: making it easier for users – is there an infographic or concise document of what resources are offered or a starting point to help introduce new people.

• Will: Virtually every aspect is being tracked such as who or how they are being used.

• Tom F: We have a long history that goes back to XSEDE, what applications, which institutions, etc… and we are doing a push on how we can do better, who are we not reaching and attracting under served community. We have a paper submitted to PEARC24 about that data.

• Useful links:

  • https://access-ci.org/about/

  • https://allocations.access-ci.org

  • https://allocations.access-ci.org/how-to

• Users are coming from a wide range of backgrounds and capabilities

• Shawn: email sent out to RAC for volunteers

  • See email subject line “Seeking a few volunteers for ACCESS website usability project”

  • Community survey to be sent out soon; RP surveys are currently being collected

Vojtech: comment on XSEDE vs other resource mechanism - allow students to be their own PI and postdocs is an invaluable experience. This could be their gateways to utilizing these allocations. That is not really well known that they could apply.

• Shawn in chat: The student point is hugely important, so thank you for raising it. Many discussions within the program about how to address their unique challenges.

• Tom F: to share data of an increase of graduate student use; Jupyter notebook use…

• Shawn in chat: Another important discussion underway now is how to better engage Resource Providers. They are both a source of expertise, but also have a wealth of software and training resources for those just getting started. We are actively working to better leverage these relationships

• George: is an R user, R community is not on HPC, yet and folks are not used to it. Difficult transition from interactive to batch.

30 min

Further discussion of Globus and data transfer topics

Dave Wheeler, Operations

1. Would Globus “Office Hours” be useful to the community?

   1. Harel: what kind of information would be given?

      1. Dave: Could address the broad range of experience, resources.

      2. Lee: Planning the first couple Office Hours events, tentatively 27-Mar for the first. Welcome questions.

      3. Harel: Where is this advertised?

         1. Lee: through Globus and ACCESS outreach channels, email and newsletters

2. Dave: what is lacking in Globus, or whatever file transfer tool you use?

   1. Jason: would like to see stronger logging capabilities to address problems encountered in connecting between universities. They need to contact both universities. Would like to streamline troubleshooting.

30 min

Publishing and discovery of software at RP sites (slides)

JP Navarro, Operations

https://operations.access-ci.org/software_discovery

• Please test and let us know what you would like to see

George: is this linked to the module environment?

• JP: Yes, this is automatically extracted from modules form each RP sites and automatically updated

• George: what I found hard to find is what operating system is done on a given resource

  • JP: each of the RPs have to enter the OS by hand, but this information is available. However, that is not listed on the software discovery interface.

  • https://allocations.access-ci.org/resources
    https://operations.access-ci.org/resources/access-allocated

10 min

1. Recap/Actions

2. Next steps

   1. Fall 2024

   2. Topics

3. Close

Laura Herriott, Allocations

Agenda topic request:

• George: Getting R onto HPC

Notes and slides will be saved on the wiki in the next few days including the metrics usage report Tom Furlani mentioned

Shawn mentioned: watch for invitation to provide feedback about ACCESS via survey