Important Guidelines

Review Policies and Project Requirements

Before running commands, submitting jobs, or using software on Pegasus or Triton, please review our IDSC ACS Policies and ensure you understand the rules governing access to IDSC resources. Access to IDSC clusters is managed on a per-project basis, facilitating team collaboration and secure data sharing.

To use Pegasus or Triton, you must be associated with a valid project:

• Triton Users: Membership in a Triton project with a resource type of triton_faculty, triton_student, or triton_education.

• Pegasus Users: Membership in a Pegasus project with the resource type pegasus_project.

Cluster resources (CPU hours, scratch space, etc.) are allocated to projects. Join projects by contacting Principal Investigators (PIs). See Projects & Resources for more.

Network Access Requirement

You must connect to the University of Miami network either: - Directly on campus, or - Remotely using the VPN.

• Login Node Usage – What Not to Do:

Do not run production or resource-intensive jobs on login nodes. Always use the Serial/Parallel Job Scripts or Pegasus and Triton Queues to submit jobs to the appropriate compute queues. Violating this policy may result in account suspension.

To test code interactively or install extra software modules (e.g., Python or R), submit a job to the interactive queue in LSF. You’ll be placed on a compute node, and returned to the login node after exiting.

Use the interactive queue for resource-intensive CLI jobs (e.g., sort, find, awk, sed, etc.). See Interactive Jobs for more.

Job Submissions and Scheduler Guidance

Pegasus compute nodes run jobs through the LSF scheduler. Jobs must be submitted as either batch or interactive, based on use case.

In a shared-resource system, it’s essential to specify: - Requested memory - CPU count - Runtime - Any additional resources

If your jobs exceed requested limits, they may impact other users and degrade system performance. If unsure about job requirements, benchmark first using the debug queue.

See LSF Overview for complete job submission instructions.

Software Modules and Environment Management

Pegasus and Triton use the Environment Modules system to load available software. Use module avail to see available software and module load <name> to activate it. Some modules are preloaded at login. Use module list to see currently loaded modules.

See g-modules for full usage details.

File Transfer Best Practices

Use SCP or SFTP to move files between local machines and Pegasus or Triton. File transfers should be performed from login nodes.

Data can be transferred from: - /scratch - /nethome / /home (for storage only — not active job execution)

See Transferring Files for instructions and recommendations, including large data transfers to/from UM.

Scratch Usage for Job I/O

All input and output data for compute jobs must reside in the /scratch filesystem. This area is optimized for high-throughput access.

Do not use /nethome or /home for active job execution — this may degrade performance and result in account restrictions.