A Grid Service Gateway is a set of tools, applications, and data that is integrated in a portal or an application suite, such as a graphical user interface on a website, that is customized for a targeted user community. These tools allow the application to interface with various resources, such as high performance computing (HPC) and scientific instruments. The University of Tennessee’s (UT) National Institute for Computational Science provides HPC assets to NSF and UT researchers to further their scientific research. In providing these resources for use by a gateway, security must be taken into consideration. The below describes NICS Grid Services policies.
Contact
Contact accounts@nics.utk.edu if you need assistance with community account registration, community shell, or any other issue regarding Science Gateways and their use of NICS resources.
1. Citizenship
All users of the NICS resources are required to self identify citizenship. This includes users that make use of XSEDE community accounts. Users from restricted countries will not be allowed to access NICS resources without proper authorization.
2. Gateways and Grid Services
NICS supports XSEDE Science Gateways that have been awarded through the XSEDE allocation process. In this process, the awardees must identify themselves as a Science Gateway and create a portal machine that will interact with all XSEDE sites that support each Science Gateway. Below lists the requirements of such an effort.
- The Science Gateway must apply through the XSEDE allocation process and be granted Science Gateway status.
- The Science Gateway must use GRAM5 for remote job submissions.
- A portal machine will be identified as the only place where they can launch remote jobs.
- NICS will review and approve the commands being run by community accounts (see commsh below).
- Science Gateways that employ NICS resources are required to follow XSEDE policies and NICS policies.
3. Community Account
NICS requires Science Gateway registration and allocation approval in advance for use of NICS resources related to community accounts and Science Gateways.
Use by a science gateway of a regular user account as a shared account is not allowed. Only registered XSEDE Community Accounts can be shared. This would be a violation of the NICS end user agreement of sharing accounts with other users.
4. Community Shell (commsh)
NICS requires all community accounts and users of grid services to make use of the commsh application. Commsh will be required to be the default login shell for any community account and will be used to authorize grid service requests. Commsh is a means of securing shared community accounts and grid services at the resource level.
