General Policies

General Research Computing Policies

The Discovery cluster is a shared resource; the following policies have been created to increase efficiency for the Northeastern research community. Failure to follow Discovery policies could result in your account being revoked and/or disciplinary action by the university. If you have any questions or concerns about these policies, please contact the Research Computing team.

Accessing the Cluster

While Discovery is available to anyone affiliated with Northeastern University, students must have a faculty sponsor.
Every person who uses Discovery must have his or her own account. Get started by visiting our documentation.
Never share your login ID or password with any other person, whether they are affiliated with the university or not.
Three general partitions (long, large, and multigpu) have additional access guidelines. See the Partitions page on our documentation site.

General HPC Use

Do not run jobs on the login nodes. If you run a job on a login node, it will be terminated.
Do not use Discovery for any purpose other than for Northeastern University sponsored research.
Review and comply with Northeastern’s Policy on Appropriate Use of Computer and Network Resources

HPC Maintenance

Routine maintenance will typically be performed on the first Tuesday of the month.
During the maintenance window, you will not be able to run jobs on Discovery. This includes private partitions on Discovery.
All routine cluster maintenance, emergency maintenance, and annual shutdown maintenance information will be posted and archived on the Status Updates page.
Maintenance reminders will be sent via email to all Discovery users, but the best place to find up to date information on the cluster status is on the Status Updates page.