Page Comparison

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The Edu POD currently consists of a storage server (educstor01) with 24 4TB disks, three Dell PowerEdge R640 compute servers (educcomp01, educcomp02, educcomp04) with 52 cores/104 hyper-threads and 1TB of RAM. All server hostnames are in the ccbb.utexas.edu domain (e.g. educcomp01.ccbb.utexas.edu).

There is also now a virtual host name, edupod.cns.utexas.edu, that acts as a front-end, redirecting requests to specific back-end compute server based on server load. This virtual hostname can be used to access SSH, R Studio and JupyterHub servers unless a specific host is required (e.g. if a tmux or screen session is desired).

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Since the Edu POD will be used to support official UT courses, UT EIDs are used for student accounts rather than the standard BRCF accounts tied to TACC accounts. Likewise, authentication is performed using UT EID authentication protocols rather than central password storage and deployment.

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The single Admin account is maint. Instructor,TA, and Student accounts will be are UT EIDs.

The Admin, Instructors and TAs will have sudo access on the Edu POD, and will have access to the Class Management web application (https://rctf-account-request.icmb.utexas.edu/edu-pod/ accessible only from the UT campus network or with the UT VPN service active). Students will not have access to the Class management application.

Class/semester groups

Bioinformatics-related courses will Courses have a class designation (e.g. Bio369i) and a semester (e.g. Fall 2018). POD administration policies will revolve around these class and class/semester concepts.

• Each class will have has an associated class Unix group (e.g. Bio369i)
• Each class/semester combination will also have has an associated Unix group (e.g. Bio369i_Fall2018)
• Users associated with a class/semester will be are assigned to both the class and class/semester Unix groups
  • the class/semester Unix group will be their primary group by default

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File system organization

File system structures will also revolve around follows the class and class/semester concepts. Edu POD Home/Work/Scratch areas are slightly different from standard BRCF PODs, with the following goals:

• Home directory access is user-only so that students cannot see each others work
  • Home directories do not have quotas so that larger data files can be stored herethere
• Work areas for each class ID and course (class/semester)
  
  • Files (e.g. assignments and data files)
  
  
  • Collaborative multi-user projects can be located herecan be stored in the shared class/semester Work directory
  • Instructors can use the Work area class directory to store files that will be used multiple semesters.
• A single Scratch area for each class ID

File system structure details:

• /stor/home
  
  • will contain contains user home directories (as ZFS file systems)
  • directory permission 700 (only allow access by the owning account
    • instructors & TAs can view via sudo
    )
    • set and enforced by Puppet even if changed by user
  • directory group will be is the user's default Unix group (usually a course offering class/semester group)
  • there are no quotas applied to home directories
  • snapshots are not enabled for home directories
• /stor/work
  • will have has a class directory ZFS for each class ID (e.g. /stor/work/Bio369i)
    • intended for resources common to many course offering semesters
    • owned by the instructor and class Unix group
    • permission 2750 (writable only by owner; readable by class)
      • set but not enforced by Puppet
    each class will have a nested
    • permissions allow read/write by the class Unix group.
  • each class also has a semester directory ZFS for each course offering (e.g. /stor/work/Bio369i_Fall2018)
    • intended for resources specific to a particular class/semester, as well as multi-user projects at the instructor's discretion
    • owned by the instructor and course offering grouppermission 2770 (writable by anyone in the group)class/semester Unix group
    • permissions allow read/write by the class/semester Unix group.
• /stor/scratch
  • will have has a class directory ZFS for each class (e.g. /stor/scratch/Bio369i)
    • intended for temporary/externally downloaded resources
    • owned by the instructor and class Unix grouppermission 2770 (writable by anyone in the group)
    • set but not enforced by Puppetpermissions allow read/write by the class Unix group.

SSH access

Instructors, TAs and active students can use SSH to access command-line computation resources, either using the edupod.cns.utexas.edu virtual hostname or by specifying a specific EDU POD compute server (e.g. educcomp01.ccbb.utexas.edu).

SSH access from outside the UT campus network requires either the use of UT VPN service, or public key encryption as described at Passwordless Access via SSH.

Desktop file system access via Samba

The Samba remote file system protocol allows you users to mount POD storage from desktop or laptop computers as if it were a local file system. Samba access is available from UT campus network addresses or from outside of UT using the UT VPN service.

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Direct Samba access to the class Work area is not available, but symbolic links in home directories can provide access.

Data/account retention

Following standard BRCF processes, Home and Work areas will be backed up weekly (non-incremental). Scratch is never backed up.

Once a class is over, the instructor may request that student Home directories and Work class/semester directories be archived to tape at ranch it is marked as "No longer active" in the EDU pod account management interface. Once a class is inactive, associated accounts are deleted and their Home directories directories archived to TACC's ranch tape archive system and removed from Edu POD storage. Before removal occurs, instructors may request that specified directories be retained on the POD. Additionally, Home directories for students that are still enrolled in other classes will are not be affectedaffected. Work area directories and class/semester directories are also archived to ranch at the same time.

Software

The Edu POD will have all standard POD utilities and bioinformatics software installed. In addition, instructors wish to make use of both web-based application servers: JupyterHub server with Python3 and R Studio server, so those will be installed on all EDU Edu compute servers.

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