Requesting Resources
All Nectar virtual machine instances and storage are part of a resource group known as a Project. To use the Nectar Research Cloud or OwnTime a user must be a member of a Project. Projects have a quota of resources allocated to them, such as the number of virtual CPUs, memory, storage and the number of instances (VMs) allowed.
To start using Nectar you will need to be added to an existing project or you will need to request a new Project allocation. To be added to an existing project ask the Chief Investigator or Project Leader or their delegate to add you to the project.
To request a new project, the user must log in to the Nectar dashboard https://dashboard.rc.nectar.org.au. Access to the Nectar dashboard is available to all Australian researchers, using AAF (Australian Access Federation) to authenticate you. Once logged in navigate to the Allocations tab on the left hand side, and then to the New Request tab.
This opens the allocation request form. There are a large number of fields to fill in on the request. Those marked with an asterisk (*) are mandatory. Next to each is a button with a question mark (?) that provides context sensitive help when you hover your mouse over it.
The following sections include information on some of the trickier fields in the form. For others the context help should aid you.
| Project Identifier |
A short name used to identify your project. Choose something that |
| Project allocation title | A longer human-friendly descriptive name for your research project. |
| Allocation home location | Always select New South Wales (Intersect). |
| Research Grant Information | If there are no grants then select “I don’t have any grants”. |
| Shared File System Service | This is only for QCIF users. If you require shared storage please submit a request for Intersect Space. Space is a hierarchical petabyte scale storage system delivered as NFS to your instances. |
| Submit | Click the Submit button. This verifies all fields have been completed. If an error is found the form will not be submitted and you can go back end edit it. You will need to correct any fields with missing data. Missing fields will be highlighted with a red border. |
Next Steps
Once you submit your form the Intersect project approvers will be notified. The status can be seen in the My Requests tab.
They’ll validate the information you provided and will then generate an estimate for the maximum cost of your project request and submit this to the designated approver for your institution along with your request form. You may be contacted to provide more information, but in general the smaller and simpler your request the more likely that it will be approved quickly.
If the institutional approver agrees with the request then Intersect will process the form and submit it for project creation. You’ll be emailed automatically by the project allocation system when this happens. This process can sometimes take 2-3 weeks to complete, but often it will be a lot faster than that.
Once the project is created you will be able to log in to the Nectar dashboard and access your new project. There is a drop down menu in the top left, near the Nectar Cloud logo to select the projects you are a member of.
You can now add other users to your Project and together you can create storage and launch instances.
Last updated: 25 May 2019
Source: https://inter.fyi/RFj9/