[gold-users] Projects and accounts

[Scott Jackson]

Michael,

Michael Sternberg wrote:
> I have a few newbie questions regarding organizational structure and  
> Gold terminology:
>
> (1) Are project hierarchies implemented?  (I'm using Gold-2.1.8.1)
>
>   
Account hierarchies exist, not project hierarchies, per se. However, 
this amounts to the same thing. For example, you could create two 
projects, A and B, then create an account for each of them (a pool of 
resource credits). Then you could link the accounts as parent and child. 
This allows for the delegation of management responsibilities, the 
establishment of automatic rules for the distribution of downstream 
resource credits, and the option of making higher level credits 
available to lower level accounts.
> (2) The torque and Moab *account* entity addresses Gold *project*  
> names rather then Gold *account* names - Scott explained this in http://www.supercluster.org/pipermail/gold-users/2006-November/000013.html
>
> How does Gold handle a project with several accounts. i.e., how is an  
> appropriate account selected from a machine/project/user tuple?
>
>   
Gold sorts them by expiration time and generality. First and foremost, 
Gold will use the credits that expire earliest, then, as a second level 
differentiator, it will sort them such that accounts which are more 
general are used last. For example, an account valid for just scottmo or 
the specified machine, will be chosen before an account that is a 
catchall for MEMBERS (more general) or ANY (most general). Let me know 
if you would like more detail and I can dig up an email I sent someone 
earlier who wanted to know the precise algorithm.
> I wanted to create an organizational structure as follows:
>
>    - Physical department -> Project D
>
>    - Project D will have an intrinsic Account -> DA0
>      This will be a fallback/testing account.
>
>    - Physical department has Staff -> Users U1, U2, ...
>      I give those users accounts under Project D -> DA1, DA2, ...
>
>   
Does this mean you create the accounts with User=MEMBERS (allowing the 
users to be implied from the user members of Project D),
or that you create the accounts with Users=U1,U2,U3 explicitly 
(basically ignoring their project affiliation)? I assume you mean the 
former.

>    - Proposals -> Project P<n>, with auto-account
>
> My intent is resource tracking by user while having the department as  
> umbrella, e.g. for "gbalance -p Department".
Ahh, I see. We'd have to set it up to see how well this works. Account 
hierarchies, although implemented, are little used and this was not 
their primary purpose (to be used as an umbrella for reporting). I think 
there is a good chance it will work for gstatement and gbalance. I'm not 
at all certain about gusage.
>  "gusage" within a multi- 
> user project gives usage by user, but I'd like separate limits, which  
> requires separate accounts.  As a side effect, collecting user  
> accounts under one project will reduce the number of Projects (I have  
> another foreseeably large physical namespace of Proposals, which have  
> to map to projects).  Would this work in practice?
>   
I believe so. Are you able to setup some test accounts and mock up your 
ideas? I will be happy to call you and help you through any difficulties 
you might run into.

Thanks,

Scott


>
> Michael
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