Shareholders

Euler is financed by its shareholders. Some shares belong to research groups, some to institures or departments, and one share belongs to ETH - the public share.

A small part of Euler is open to all members of ETH and allows them to run small computations (max 48 CPU cores and 128 GiB RAM) at no cost. These resources are not guaranteed and if the cluster is very busy, jobs from the public share will have a long pending time. There are no GPUs in the public share.

Normal shares¶

Research groups or institutes who want more resources (CPUs, GPUs, RAM, or storage) can become shareholders of Euler by financing resources in the cluster. In return, they get the right to use, on average, a share of the cluster's resources proportional to their investment. Please note that shareholder are not buying physical resources with exclusive access.

Shareholders are not limited to the resources they bought but can use (far) more resources during peaks, as long as their average usage does not deviate too much from their “fair share” of the cluster. This elasticity is one of the most important features of the shareholder model.

The terms and conditions are described in the corresponding service level agreement. The service owner is Olivier Byrde, head of the HPC Group.

Becoming a shareholder¶

Professors, institutes or departments who would like to become shareholders of Euler can invest at any time. The official service description and the current price list are available in the IT service catalogue. Since July 2016 EAWAG, EMPA, PSI and WSL can also become shareholders of Euler by requesting a share.

Request share

Please contact us to discuss the details of your investment and the expected usage of Euler via email cluster-support@id.ethz.ch.

Managing shareholder groups¶

The list of members of a shareholder group is managed by the IT Services Group (ISG) of the shareholder's department. To become member of a shareholder group, contact the ISG of the relevant department.

IT Service Group (ISG)

Department	Abbreviation	IT Service Group (ISG)
Architecture	D-ARCH	it.arch.ethz.ch
Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering	D-BAUG	baug.ethz.ch/en/services/it-services.html
Biosystems Science and Engineering	D-BSSE	bsse.ethz.ch/department/administration-services/it-services.html
Computer Science	D-INFK	isg.inf.ethz.ch
Information Technology and Electrical Engineering	D-ITET	isg.ee.ethz.ch/services.html SharePoint: id-isg-itet
Materials	D-MATL	www.isg.mat.ethz.ch
Mechanical and Process Engineering	D-MAVT	SharePoint: id-isg-mavt
Biology	D-BIOL	SharePoint: id-isg-biol
Chemistry and Applied Biosciences	D-CHAB	chab.ethz.ch/en/the-department/services/it-services.html
Mathematics	D-MATH	math.ethz.ch/the-department/people/it-support-group.html
Physics	D-PHYS	phys.ethz.ch/services/physics-isg.html
Earth and Planetary Sciences	D-EAPS	(Contact information not available)
Health Sciences and Technology	D-HEST	isg.hest.ethz.ch
Environmental Systems Science	D-USYS	isg-usys.ethz.ch
Management, Technology and Economics	D-MTEC	SharePoint: id-isg-mtec
Humanities, Social and Political Sciences	D-GESS	www.s4d.id.ethz.ch/d-gess SharePoint: id-isg-gess

ISGs manage shareholder group membership using ETH groups. These groups are exported to LDAPS and can be used for both file permissions and user access control on Euler. Typically, a group named DEPT-ISG-GROUP includes all members associated with the department’s Leitzahl, as well as semester students and visiting guests.

Managing ETH groups for Euler¶

Euler supports LDAP groups defined via the ETH Identity and Access Management (IAM) system. As an ISG, you can create and manage groups in the IAM admin tool (main screen → Group management) and export them to LDAPS (Owner & Presence → Target Systems: LDAPS).

Important considerations:

Group type:
The ETH group must be exported to LDAPS. For consistency, exporting to Active Directory (AD) is also recommended.
Group name stability:
Avoid renaming groups. If a name change is necessary, please contact us first.
Use the ETH-wide LDAPS subtree:
Only ETH-wide groups in the
```
ou=custom,ou=groups,ou=nethz,ou=id,ou=auth,o=ethz,c=ch
```
subtree of LDAPS are supported. Department-specific groups cannot be used.

Using only this subtree ensures service availability across ETH and prevents group name or ID collisions. Contact us if you have questions about IAM or LDAPS group usage with our HPC clusters.

Exporting an ETH Group to LDAPS¶

ETH group management

Export ETH group to LDAPS

Adding a Subgroup to an ETH Group¶

ETH groups for cluster access can include subgroups, making it easy to add, for example, an entire Leitzahl or individual guests. Changes to subgroups are automatically reflected in the parent group.

Below are step-by-step instructions for adding the ID-HPC-BETA subgroup to the ID-HPC-EULER group. After this, ID-HPC-EULER will include all members of ID-HPC-BETA.

Open the IAM admin tool. On the main screen, select "Group management" and then "Select group":
Enter the name of the top group and click the green "Search" button:
Click the pencil icon to edit the group:
In the "Group role references" section, find the "Subgroup" text box at the bottom. Click the "(click here to add value)" line. If there are existing subgroups, scroll to the bottom to find this option.
Click the people icon:
Enter the name of the subgroup and click the green "Search" button:
Click the name of the subgroup:

You will return to the group modification page. The subgroup will now appear in the "Subgroup" box. Click the blue "Save" button to confirm: