Allocation and Account Administration

Who is eligible to use TGI RAILS?

Geospatial related researchers, faculty, and staff at each of the TGI member organizations are eligible to use RAILS for geospatial-related research. The system can also be used in courses of any discipline. Additionally up to 20% of RAILS capability is accessible via the Open Science Grid..

How to get started on RAILS? Requesting an Allocation

Getting started on RAILS is easy, simply follow these steps. For assistance, contact your local institution’s TGI support team or send questions to help@ncsa.illinois.edu

1. Complete the TGI Data Services Request form on the TGI website, select “Data Processing or Analytics” under “What service do you need?” and answer the subsequent questions regarding the specifics of your request.

2. Once your request has been processed and approved by TGI, you will receive an email from DataServices@taylorgeospatial.org asking you to setup an NCSA account and enroll in Duo two-factor authentication.

  1. Once your NCSA account is setup you can submit a proposal using the `NCSA XRAS interface.

<https://xras-submit.ncsa.illinois.edu/opportunities/532814/requests/new>`_ The proposal will need to include a title, the TGI institution you are affiliated with, a short abstract suitable for posting on public web sites, a statement of the project goals and a best estimate of the allocation you’ll need on RAILS.

4. After your project receives approval, it will be set up in the NCSA management system and on TGI RAILS. You’ll then have access to RAILS to and be able to submit jobs!

Adding Users to Your Allocation

PIs can add and remove users from their allocation using the NCSA group management interface. PIs can delegate the ability to manage users to other project members once those accounts are added to the project. Please refer to this page for additional documentation on the group management interface.

NCSA Account Managment

You can manage your NCSA identity (change email, password, Duo device, etc) through the NCSA Identity and group management tools.

Each RAILS user will be a member of at least one allocated project which will map to a group on the RAILS system.

Allocation Policies

  • TGI awarded projects and allocations currently do not receive periodic messages regarding approaching project expiration.

  • Projects will no longer be able to run jobs after their project expires or their allocation is exhausted.

  • There is a 0-day grace-period for expired RAILS projects to allow for data management access only.

  • Following the grace period expired projects will be removed from the system and project data removed.

  • Any accounts no longer on an active project are removed from the system and their home directory data removed.

Allocation Supplements and Extensions

Requests for resource allocation supplements (compute, GPU, or storage) and extensions can be made via the appropriate XRAS website.

  • TGI allocation PIs can find instructions for requesting supplements and extensions at the bottom of the Delta Allocations page. While that page documents the process for Delta projects, the process is the same for TGI RAILS projects.