External Advisory Board Orientation

Chuck Pavloski

National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA)

Co-PI, ACCESS Coordination Office (ACO)

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Friday, January 31, 2025

9:00 am - 11:00 am Pacific

11:00 am - 1:00 pm Central

12:00 pm - 2:00 pm Eastern

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Agenda

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Welcome new and returning EAB members!

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What is ACCESS?

ACCESS is a program established and funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) to help researchers and educators utilize the nation’s advanced computing systems and services. Almost any computer application that requires more than a desktop or laptop could qualify as needing an advanced computing system. Examples include supercomputer applications, AI and machine learning, big data analysis and storage, and others.

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ACCESS is an acronym that stands for “Advanced Cyberinfrastructure Coordination Ecosystem: Services & Support.” NSF awarded $52 million over five years to five lead institutions and their sub-awardees to facilitate the ACCESS program.

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https://access-ci.org/about/organization/

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ACCESS Program and Governance Structure

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• Allocations provides mechanisms for researchers and educators to gain access to advanced computing, visualization, and data resources to accomplish their objectives
• Support provides expertise and services to the ACCESS research community
• Operations supports resource providers (RPs), ACCESS projects, and developers who need to integrate and operate infrastructure in ACCESS
• Metrics & Monitoring provides monitoring, measurement, and reporting tools and services of the ACCESS CI facilities
• Coordination Office is a conduit for sharing information and facilitating collaboration across the ACCESS program
• Resource Providers (RPs) are organizations that share cyberinfrastructure (CI) resources with researchers and scientists and are a key part of ACCESS

Puri

Bangalore�NSF

Jeremy Fischer�RPs rep.

ACCESS Program and Governance Structure

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• Allocations provides mechanisms for researchers and educators to gain access to advanced computing, visualization, and data resources to accomplish their objectives
• Support provides expertise and services to the ACCESS research community
• Operations supports resource providers (RPs), ACCESS projects, and developers who need to integrate and operate infrastructure in ACCESS
• Metrics & Monitoring provides monitoring, measurement, and reporting tools and services of the ACCESS CI facilities
• Coordination Office is a conduit for sharing information and facilitating collaboration across the ACCESS program
• Resource Providers (RPs) are organizations that share cyberinfrastructure (CI) resources with researchers and scientists and are a key part of ACCESS

Ed Walker�NSF

Jeremy Fischer�RPs rep.

ACCESS Code of Conduct

Full details: https://access-ci.org/code-of-conduct/

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ACCESS is committed to providing a welcoming, inclusive, and harassment-free environment in all interactions regardless of race, age, ethnicity, national origin, language, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, political views, military service, health status or religion. We welcome the opportunity to bring ACCESS to all people regardless of their identity or background.

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This commitment extends to all ACCESS-sponsored events and services (in-person training, webinars, committee meetings, networking functions, online forums, chat rooms and social media) and any interaction including staff-to-participant, participant-to-participant, and participant-to-staff. Participants are all individuals who are not ACCESS staff who attend and participate including but not limited to administrators, faculty, students, researchers and research computing professionals.

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As a program that aims to share ideas and freedom of thought and expression, it is essential that the interaction between participants, users of ACCESS services and ACCESS staff take place in an environment that recognizes the inherent worth of every person by being respectful of all. All ACCESS participants strive to be empathetic, respectful, welcoming, friendly, and patient. We strive to be collaborative and use language that reflects our values.

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The ACCESS program does not tolerate harassment in any form. Harassment is any form of behavior intended to exclude, intimidate or cause discomfort. Harassment includes, but is not limited to, the use of abusive or degrading language, intimidation, stalking, harassing photography or recording, inappropriate physical contact, and unwelcome sexual attention.

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Supporting the NAIRR Pilot

• Allocations managing proposal review process and hosting XRAS instance
• Support leading User Experience Working Group
• ACO and Allocations co-chairing the Allocations Working Group
• Operations providing ticketing system
• Metrics providing usage metrics through XDMoD

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https://nairrpilot.org/

Enabling Science & Engineering Research and Education

Success is measured by impact in Science & Engineering

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More stories at https://access-ci.org/news/

ACCESS Coordination Office (ACO)

John Towns

National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA)

PI, ACCESS Coordination Office (ACO)

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PI: John Towns (NCSA/Illinois); Co-PIs: Amit Majumdar (SDSC/UCSD), Chuck Pavloski (NCSA/Illinois); �Other team members: NCSA: Dina Meek, Lavanya Podilla, Shannon Bradley; SDSC: Kim Mann Bruch, Cindy Wong; �External Evaluator: Lisa Kaczmarczyk

Award: NSF 21-38296

Total: $5.21M / 5 years

ACO is Essential for the Success of the ACCESS Program

�The ACO envisions a program in which shared governance and horizontal leadership create a more inclusive and vibrant CI ecosystem in which Service Team PIs work with common purpose through well-defined decision-making processes, transparency in communication, and a singular focus that drives transformational science and engineering results.

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• Provide a framework for shared governance through internal mechanisms (charters, working groups), reinforced by external advisory mechanisms (External Advisory Board, ACO External Evaluator, ad hoc advisory group, targeted surveys)
• Articulate the value and impact of ACCESS to the community through the website, newsletters, science stories, and outreach services for community events
• Quantify the impact of ACCESS and support continuous process improvement by facilitating and providing expertise in evaluation
• Support program wide processes and interaction through tools, meeting services, and mechanisms supported by the Project Office

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ACO Mission

ACO Strategies

ACO Primary Functions

Governance

• facilitating Executive Council (EC) and External Advisory Board (EAB)

Communications & Outreach

• primary interface between the ACCESS program and the wider community

Evaluation and Evaluation Support

• support for Evaluation Standing Committee and conducting additional feedback solicitation activities

Back-end Coordination

• lots of support of logistics and other coordination “behind the scenes”
• tools to facilitate the operation of the program

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Governance: EC and EAB

Executive Council (EC) serves as the program's primary management and governance body of the ACCESS Program

• sets policies for the program, oversees work of Working Groups and Standing Committees, developed program-wide goals, plans program-wide meetings

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External Advisory Board (EAB) is a critical source of expert advice

• reviews program progress and plans, addresses questions/concerns brought by the ACCESS team, provides feedback and recommendations to the program

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Communications & Outreach

Focused on engaging underrepresented segments of the community and fostering diversity

• Facilitating program-wide communications efforts via Web Presence Standing Committee and Communications Standing Committee
• annual communications plan, managing the ACCESS brand, ...
• producing considerable communications throughout the year
• monthly newsletters, annual program highlights publication, researcher stories, social media presence, …
• Event coordination and materials
• continuing ACCESS presence at PEARC and SC, presence at select additional events, promoting conference materials for staff use at conferences, developing swag, engaging booth activities and RP promotion at SC, …
• Continued Evaluation of Readership
• understand current demographics; determine best ways to reach underserved populations

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Evaluation and Evaluation Support

• Support and facilitate program-wide evaluation activities via Evaluation Standing Committee
• maximize the use and dissemination of evaluation findings
• identify commonalities, gaps, and opportunities for collaboration
• Improved data management and access for evaluation and metric data (both ACO and ACCESS-wide)
• Meet with informal advisory group comprised of leads of “ACO-like” efforts in other programs
• Incorporate multiple feedback channels for ongoing improvement in ACO facilitation and governance
• Continued engagement with ACO’s External Evaluator
• ACO-specific external evaluation
• Refine ACO metrics and KPIs in accordance with Program-wide Goals

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Back-end Coordination

• Create and improve tools and processes and work toward increased adoption and usage across program
• Confluence wiki, task and activity trackers, milestone tracker, risk management tools, change management tools, …
• Logistical and other coordination support
• meeting planning and execution for variety of events: EC meetings, EAB meetings, Researcher Advisory Committee Meetings, quarterly program-wide meetings, …
• Continue to gather feedback from the EC and ACCESS staff
• drive improvements in ACO and in program-wide coordination

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ACCESS Support Services – Producing a User Friendly Ecosystem

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Shelley Knuth, PI

Assistant Vice Chancellor for Research Computing

University of Colorado Boulder

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Supported by NSF #2138286

ACCESS Support

• If you build it they will come…well, that depends
• Are we welcoming?
• Are they intimidated by the idea?
• Do they feel like they are the “right” people to use large-scale infrastructure?
• Do people know how to use the systems?

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Goals

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Providing equitable, scalable support to best enable research

on NSF-funded cyberinfrastructure

How? Democratizing access to advanced cyberinfrastructure resources

Democratizing Access to Resources

• Decrease time to science
• Allow researchers to self-serve
• Leverage existing tools
• Comprehensive Knowledge Base (KB)
• Events, training
• Question and answer forum – ask.ci
• Concierge level support

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Offerings

• Tools
• Open On-Demand
• Pegasus Workflow
• ACCESS Support Portal
• Recommender Tool
• Software Discovery Tool

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• Services
• Ticket response
• Office Hours
• Community building�
• Data collection
• What does the community want?
• General input/AI

Travel Grant Opportunities

• ACCESS CSSN Community Participation Program (CCEP)
• Earn travel support rewards by contributing to the ACCESS Knowledge Base, joining committees, becoming a mentor
• Requested trainings/materials
• Workforce building
• Domain specific conference presentations

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https://support.access-ci.org/ccep

NAIRR

• Contributions as part of ACCESS/similar
• User Experience Working Group
• Partners
• NAIRR Resource Providers
• SCIPE/Early Cybertraining awardees
• AI Workshop

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Comet, San Diego Supercomputing

Center, from sdsc.edu

Program Year 3 Goals

• Keeping pace with technological changes and user demands

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• Advancing knowledge to best support computational resource needs

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• Diversifying engagement in, and use of, support services

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Goal 1

• Keeping pace with technological changes and user demands

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• Increase understanding of AI
• PEARC Hackathon
• “AI Unlocked: Empowering Higher Ed Through Research and Discovery”
• Support events that promote engagement on cyberinfrastructure topics of interest
• PEARC BoF
• Monthly office hours (Pegasus, NAIRR, OOD)
• Global Open OnDemand Conference
• Provide concierge level services that leverage SCIPE/CIP awardees; RPs
• Continual tool development
• Engagement with external science projects
• LIGO, XENONnT, SCEC, EHT, CryoEM

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Goal 2

• Advancing knowledge to best support computational resource needs
• Strengthen collaboration with Resource Providers
• 1:1 meetings
• September workshop
• Support community on workforce development through workshops
• Hands on assistance with OnDemand deployments; providing information to researchers and educators
• Improve website usability

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Goal 3

• Diversifying engagement in, and use of, support services
• Decentralized outreach efforts
• CCEPs for individuals to deliver information on ACCESS at domain specific conferences
• Collecting additional OnDemand metrics
• Recognition of contributions (CCEP, Badges)
• Outreach and Marketing

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Jetstream at Indiana University, from iu.edu

The Journey of ACCESS Support

• Year 1 was about transition from XSEDE

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• Year 2 was about building out our services
• CCEP, MATCH Plus and Premier, ticketing system, portal, OnDemand, Pegasus, etc.

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• Year 3 was about refining our services
• Is what we are building working for our user community?
• Democratization of access to resources

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• Year 4 is about building community
• Not just providing the services but connecting people who use them

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Questions

1. What are some great ways to build community?

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• What goals should be a focus for PY4?

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Metrics

Tom Furlani

University at Buffalo

PI, Metics (MMS)

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University at Buffalo (White, Jones, Simakov, Saeli, Weeden, Dean, Rathsam, Stoltman, Tovar); TACC (Schopf, Harrell, Ruhela), SDSC (Smallen), Case Western (Chaudhary), Tufts (Patra)

ACCESS Monitoring and Measurement Service (Metrics)

Comprehensive framework for CI system management

• National and local CI resources

Understand and optimize resource utilization and performance

• Provide wide range of utilization metrics
• Measure Quality of Service of CI systems and applications
• Measure and improve job and system level performance
• Inform computing system upgrades and procurements

ACCESS XDMoD (XD Metrics on Demand) tool

• Analytics Framework for ACCESS

Open XDMoD*: Open Source version for CI centers

• 400+ academic, governmental, & commercial installations

Data Analytic Framework

• Jupyter Notebooks, Python, R based
• Provides community with custom analysis capability

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known Open XDMoD installs

Why a Monitoring and Measurement Service?

The landscape before XDMoD: NPACI and TeraGrid

• Accounting data incomplete and only available quarterly
• Job level performance data not available
• No external measure of Quality of Service (QoS)
• RP quarterly and annual reports done manually
• CI planning and analysis lacked data (utilization, allocation, workload analyses, etc)

Monitoring and Measurement Service

• Technology Audit Service (TAS: 1025159): 2010 – 2015
• XD Metrics Service (XMS: 1445806): 2015 – 2022
• ACCESS Monitoring and Measurement Service (MMS: 2137603): 2022 - 2027

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Why Improving CI Performance Matters?

CI systems are oversubscribed

• Improving application or system performance improves overall job throughput
• Free’s up otherwise wasted CPU cycles for useful work

Small improvements in performance can have high impact

• Every 1% increase in system performance on XSEDE/ACCESS resources allows the allocation of an additional 101 M CPU hours annually
• Corresponds to a savings of $5M (based on $.05 per CPU hour)

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ACCESS Metrics

• Continued development of XDMoD
• Open XDMoD broader use
• Data Analytics Framework
• Jupyter Notebook, Python, R
• Custom/ ad hoc analytics, AI
• Monitoring the CI Ecosystem
• Workload performance analyses
• Network traffic via NetSAGE
• Application diagnose/optimize
• QoS of CI
• CI Simulator for predictive analysis

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Data Analytics Framework

Provide analytic framework for direct access to XDMoD data warehouse

• Democratization of access to data and tools used for analysis

GUI Built on Jupyter notebooks

• Python and R interfaces for automated workflows and expert users
• Jupyter notebooks library/repository for users

Already heavily utilized for custom reporting and analyses

• NSF OAC, ACCESS

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Data Analytics Framework - Custom Reporting

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Preliminary NAIRR usage data via the Data Analytics Framework. Box plot showing the amount of elapsed time in days between project award and the first compute usage for the project by resource.

Number of different US institutions in each state using ACCESS resources

Monitoring the CI Ecosystem

Development of a monitoring system for CI computational ecosystem

• National-level CI, NSF-funded public cloud usage, campus-level CI, network utilization, OSG, PATh and Gateways

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​

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XDMoD portal showing the CloudBank realm

PATh usage data reporting in XDMoD

PI spend

Directorate

spend

Funder spend

PI CPU hours

Resource CPU hours

Ave Job Size

Application Power and Performance Monitoring

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Measure performance and power consumed on a per application basis

• Provide analysis of time to solution versus power consumed for applications

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Useful for new and emerging technologies

• Will the energy savings of energy efficient architecture be offset by longer running times for the job mix?

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Benchmarking extended to systems available on public clouds using ACCESS CloudBank

�Application developers can tune applications to achieve architecture specific energy efficiency

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CI Simulator

• Predict the response of the CI ecosystem to new systems or changes in the operational parameters of existing systems
• Set of models analyzing different aspects of the CI ecosystem
• Automated Workload analysis
• historical usage and trend identification
• PEARC ‘25 paper proposed
• User Recommender Model
• HPCMod
• Slurm Simulator
• Resource Recommender Model
• throughput/cost predictions
• ​

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Allocations

Stephen Deems

Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center (PSC)

PI, Allocations

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Connecting researchers and educators to the resources and services they need to accomplish their objectives

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allocations.access-ci.org

Allocation Services Vision & Goals

Allocations Vision

The NSF-funded national CI must be accessible and equitable for all researchers no matter the size of the institution, the scale of the planned work, the discipline of the research, or the demographics of the requester.

Our Goals

• Create an open, inviting, and democratized allocations marketplace

With an emphasis on continuous improvement and democratization

• …with an efficient, scalable, and simplified request and review framework

Through our policies and procedures

• …built on a robust, decentralized, and flexible software platform

Made possible by the eXtensible Resource Allocation System (XRAS)

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Allocations Supports ACCESS Goals

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Cyberinfrastructure Available

• Computing systems
• Varying core counts & memory sizes
• Cloud resources (persistent services)
• Accelerators
• GPUs, vector processors, FPGAs
• Data storage systems
• Archival, object, tiered
• Data repositories
• Software & workflow managers
• High performance networking
• CI Professionals & support tools
• System performance monitoring

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New� ACCESS Resource Catalog

deployed �December 2024

Simplified Request & Review Framework

• Explore ACCESS — for getting started, evaluating resources, and small-scale activities
• Only requires an abstract, reviewed by RPs for suitability
• Discover ACCESS — for modest-scale work, large classroom exercises
• One-page write-up, reviewed by RPs for suitability
• Accelerate ACCESS — for more experienced researchers with mid-scale needs
• Three-page proposal, subject to panel and RP review
• Maximize ACCESS — for largest-scale projects, continued close scrutiny of most demanding computational work
• 10-page proposal subject to panel and RP review
• Semi-annual schedule

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Roughly 95% of Requests are Approved!

Ecosystem Access Time

A “typical” project now takes ~10 days to go from submitting a project request to recording their first use of an ACCESS resource.

�Accounts on resources are available in ~3 days.

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2024 data coming soon!

Impacts from 2 years of ACCESS (pt 1)

2.9x� new projects� per year� (FY24 v. FY22)

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XSEDE

ACCESS

Impacts from 2 years of ACCESS (pt 2)

+50%� active users� (FY24 v FY22)

+50%� active unique PIs� (FY24 v FY22)

+19%� active organizations� (FY24 v FY22)

+74%� new projects from� non-R1s (FY24 v. FY23)

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XSEDE

ACCESS

Impacts from 2 years of ACCESS (pt 3)

• ACCESS approach has significantly reduced the panel review workload
• And researcher proposal effort!
• FY23 included four quarterly meetings
• FY24 reflects shift to semi-annual AARC meetings
• i.e., it includes final quarterly and first semi-annual meeting
• currently seems we’ll have about 180-200 Maximize ACCESS requests per year (25% of XSEDE volume)

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XSEDE

ACCESS

Who’s Using ACCESS?

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Visit ACCESS Impact on the ACCESS Allocations site

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Explore the allocations map for more in-depth information

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See who has current projects from your institution or similar institutions

Bring ACCESS to your Campus, Institution, or Program (On-Ramps)

• Instead of sending your researchers and instructors to the ACCESS website, you can point them to your own!

allocations.access-ci.org/on-ramps

• Our initial offering lets individuals browse, filter, and learn about the ACCESS-integrated resources
• They jump to the ACCESS website to make a request
• No user information is collected at your end
• An on-ramp is just an embeddable Javascript component that you can put into any webpage
• (14 lines of Javascript)
• We’re looking for campuses to help us beta test the offering and collect feedback

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Baylor

Jackson State

U Central Florida

And RMACC, Texas A&M, Keystone REN, UIUC …

The Expanded CI Ecosystem �powered by XRAS as a Service

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ACCESS Allocations

TACC Frontera

NYAS Int’l�Science Reserve�pilot

NCAR�Earth�Observing�Lab

CMU

NCSA

PSC Anton2

NCAR �CISL

NAIRR Pilot

Thank you!

​

deems@psc.edu

access-ci.org

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ACCESS Operations

Tim Boerner

National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA)

PI, Operations

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ACCESS Operations Collaborative

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Project Leadership

Tim Boerner (PI)�Principal Investigator�University of Illinois, NCSA

Leslie Froeschl�Deputy Project Director�University of Illinois, NCSA

Tom Maiden�RP Coordinator�Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center

Derek Simmel (Co-PI)�Cybersecurity Lead�Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center

JP Navarro (Co-PI)�Operational Support Co-Lead�University of Chicago

Winona Snapp-Childs, PhD (Co-PI)�Operational Support Co-Lead & STEP Lead�Indiana University

Dave Wheeler�Networking & Data Transfer Services Lead�University of Illinois, NCSA

Kathy Benninger�Networking & Data Transfer Services Co-Lead�Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center

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Mission

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The ACCESS Operations team’s mission is to serve as a source of innovation and support across the NSF-funded cyberinfrastructure ecosystem while also seeking to evolve, advance, and expand that ecosystem across the areas of cyberinfrastructure operations, resource integration, data and networking, cybersecurity, and the cyberinfrastructure professional workforce.

Operations Goals

1. Seek novel and innovative ways to expand and broaden participation in the ACCESS ecosystem. (Program Goal 1: Innovation)

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• Provide operational support, networking and data services, and cybersecurity leadership that supports a robust and reliable cyberinfrastructure ecosystem. (Program Goal 2: Facilitate Use)

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• Support resource provider needs and requirements to ensure ease of integration into the ecosystem and ongoing participation with the ACCESS program. (Program Goal 2: Facilitate Use)

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• Deliver core services that are consumed by other ACCESS areas in the delivery of their services to the community. (Program Goal 3: Excellent Support)

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• Contribute to a well-trained and diverse cyberinfrastructure workforce through student training and engagement.

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ACCESS Operations Functional Areas

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Relationships Across ACCESS

COORDINATION

• Provide: Governance via Executive Council, Internet names
• Receive: Communications, Collaboration with other awards, EAB participation

ALLOCATIONS

• Provide: Information-Sharing Platform, Ticketing System, RP Coordination
• Receive: Access to Central Database

SUPPORT

• Provide: Information-Sharing Platform, Ticketing System
• Receive: Training Dissemination, Support for Ticket Response

METRICS

• Provide: Engagement with RPs on Metrics
• Receive: Network Utilization Metrics and Analysis

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Contributions to Working Groups & Standing Committees

Lead or Co-Lead

1. Cybersecurity Governance Council
2. Infrastructure Portfolio Expansion Standing Committee
3. Ticketing System Standing Committee
4. User Profiles 2024

Contributors

1. Web & Branding
2. Evaluation
3. Communications
4. Personas

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Key Stakeholders

• Resource Providers integrate into the ACCESS ecosystem primarily through systems, service, and documentation provided by ACCESS Operations.
• ACCESS Program Awardees rely on the program-wide infrastructure services to integrate their own services into the ACCESS ecosystem and deliver them to their stakeholders.
• NSF-Funded Cyberinfrastructure Awardees work with ACCESS Operations to develop their own integration roadmap tasks, and integrate into the ACCESS ecosystem.
• National Science Foundation funds both the ACCESS Operations award and the broader ecosystem which the ACCESS Operations project supports.
• Partner Organizations collaborate with ACCESS Operations to the mutual benefit of all across many areas, from cybersecurity to data transfer.
• Researchers derive continued benefits to the conduct of their research by using the ACCESS program services and support that are enabled by the ACCESS Operations project.

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ACCESS Resource Providers

Jeremy Fischer

Jetstream2 Co-PI / Indiana University

RP Forum Chair

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What do the RPs actually do?

• The obvious
• Provide compute, storage, and affiliated resources for the national research infrastructure
• Integrate with ACCESS processes with Operations and Allocations
• The less obvious
• Provide documentation for the resources
• Provide support for the resources
• Provide outreach and training for the resources
• Work with ACCESS tracks to improve the user experience between ACCESS and the resources

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What is the RP Forum

The Resource Provider (RP) Forum provides:

• An open forum for discussion of topics of interest to the RP community.
• A formal communication channel between the RP Forum members and the ACCESS project tracks.

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The RP Forum Chair holds a voting seat on the ACCESS Executive Council representing the RPs. This position is a yearly term.

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ACCESS RP Forum Page: https://operations.access-ci.org/pub/rpf

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Bylaws are available for review if desired

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RPs role(s) in ACCESS

• A number of RPs, so not quite the same as the ACCESS tracks
• Each of the Category 1 and 2 (NSF Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure grants) RPs has their own award with NSF with different goals and requirements
• Required by these grants to integrate with ACCESS
• Other RPs that are not in this category like Derecho, Rockfish, OSG, SGX3, and others

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The ultimate goal, is the same:

Facilitate and enable science and education!

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ACCESS RP Institutions

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Q&A

Facilitator: Chuck Pavloski, ACO

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Thank you!

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Work in Progress: Program Wide Metrics

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