A New Way to Manage Resources on the National Research Platform (NRP)
The National Research Platform (NRP) is transitioning to a new system for managing computational resources. This upgrade gives research groups more direct control by delegating permissions to you. This new model will allow you to manage your own team’s access and resources without needing to contact the NRP core team for every change, enabling everyone to get their work done faster and more efficiently.
How It Works: The New Hierarchical System
The core of this upgrade is a hierarchical management system. This structure organizes users and resources in a clear, nested hierarchy, much like a folder structure:
- Organizations: The top level, such as a university or a large research consortium.
- Labs: Groups within an organization, typically led by a faculty member or primary researcher.
- Projects: Specific research initiatives within a lab.
This structure allows designated administrators to manage permissions for their own members across all their labs and projects.
Getting Started: Your First Login
Access to the NRP is managed through Authentik, our new authentication system. It connects to your existing university or institutional account via CILogon.
- The first time you log in, you will be required to read and accept the NRP Acceptable Use Policy (AUP).
- Once you accept the AUP, you become a registered user with access to all standard NRP services and resources.
Key Resources and How They’re Managed
This new hierarchical model applies to all resources you use on the platform.
Kubernetes Compute
Our primary service is providing compute resources via Kubernetes. Under the new system, each Project you create in the hierarchy directly corresponds to a namespace in the Kubernetes cluster. This gives you a secure, dedicated space for your team’s applications and workflows.
Some entities might not be tied to kubernetes namespace and instead be an LLM group or just an aggregator for another set of namespaces. Those will be created by cluster admins initially, but later also managed by namespace admins.
Group Administrators
Users with faculty, researcher, or postdoc status can request administrator permissions for their Lab or Organization. Admins can:
- Add or remove users from their groups.
- Create new Projects (i.e., Kubernetes namespaces).
- Manage resource allocations for their teams.
Other Resources
This same management approach will be used for other NRP resources, including:
- LLM proxy teams
- Storage allocations
Fair Share Scheduling & Resource Allocation
The resource hierarchy will be integrated with the Apache YuniKorn scheduler to manage how compute jobs are prioritized and allocated.
To ensure fairness and reward contributions, groups that donate hardware to the cluster receive an increased resource allowance. This bonus is automatically passed down to all the labs and projects within that group, ensuring your team directly benefits from your contributions on top of the base allocation available to everyone.
