The Subproject Facility

This document provides a summary for new PIs of the subproject facility available for projects. In particular it is intended to help you decide whether you want to use this facility for your project. You should decide before your project is set up and you start the self-registration process. Moving to subprojects at a later date is not possible. If you find once your project has been started that is is large and difficult to manage we recommend sub-allocating resources to individual users as described in the PI Guide.

What is it?

The subproject facility allows projects to divide their project into a number of smaller subprojects and manage their users and resources within these subprojects. One of the main reasons for some projects wanting this facility was to enable the allocation of proportions of the main project’s resources to sub-groups to reflect their share of the project’s computing resources.

The project PI will need to sub-allocate all project resources down to the subprojects (with the exception of training and support). PIs may hold back a proportion of any resource if they wish. All Trading and Capacity Planning will take place at the main project level only.

Each username will be affiliated to one subproject only, and will be able to use resources from that subproject only. Users may have a username in more than one subproject (different username for different subprojects). Default Unix Groups for users will match their subproject e.g. cse123a, cse123b. Users must not register at the main project level, not even the PI (and as such no access usernames and passwords will be set at this level).

Subprojects may have a user with administrative status for that subproject - a sub-PI - if this is convenient.

Should you use it?

This is a personal choice depending on your particular project and the way in which you wish to control resources. You should consider using it if your project has a large number of users and there is a natural division into groups of users and an associated division of resources (for example by site).

However, since subprojects constitute an additional layer in the resource management tree, there is an increased level of complexity involved in the PI's project management tasks. We would strongly advise only using this facility if it is really needed. The majority of existing project PIs have not chosen to have subprojects, preferring to sub-allocate resources to individual users if they need to exercise control over the rate of usage of resources.

If you think your project would benefit from subprojects please read on. If you require further advice please contact the Helpdesk.

How are subprojects set up?

We set up all subprojects. We will need the following information in order to do this:

• Number of subprojects required;
• A short description for each subproject which you will find helpful. This might be a site name for example, but will depend on your particular sub-divisions;
• Sites associated with each sub-project for access username/password purposes (not needed if the site name is used for the short description);
• And optionally, names of sub-PIs.

Please email this information to the Helpdesk as soon as possible (before anyone registers).