CÉCI account quick start

1. Account creation

Access to the CÉCI HPC infrastructure is based on personal accounts linked to your institutional affiliation. If all eligibility conditions are met, you can initiate the creation of your CÉCI account via the the corresponding procedure.

Users affiliated to a CÉCI university

• Go to the CÉCI account management portal .
• Enter your institutional email address.
• You will receive an email containing a unique validation link.
• Follow the link and complete the online form with your personal and institutional details.
• Your request is reviewed by a system administrator at your institution.
• Once approved, your account is created and credentials are sent by email.

During the account creation process, you will be asked to provide the email address of your supervisor or reference contact. This person must hold a permanent academic or scientific position at one of the CÉCI universities. If you are yourself a PI or professor, you may instead provide the contact information of a trusted colleague who also holds a permanent position.

Each CÉCI account must be associated with an additional academic contact.

After activation, it may take up to approximately 20 minutes before access is enabled across all clusters.

Guest accounts

For external collaborators who do not have an institutional email address from a CÉCI member university, it is possible to request a guest account.

Guest accounts must be created and managed by a registered CÉCI user holding a permanent academic or scientific position at one of the CÉCI universities. This person, referred to as the supervisor, is responsible for the guest account and its usage.

Guest accounts must be created and managed by a sponsor or supervisor who already holds a CÉCI account. The sponsoring user is responsible for the guest account and its usage.

• The guest supervisor must go to the CÉCI account management portal .
• Select the option Invite a guest or renew a guest account.
• Enter your CÉCI account email address and the email address of your guest.
• For the guest you must provide an institutional email address corresponding to their current academic affiliation. Personal email addresses (Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, etc.) are not accepted.
• The guest will receive an email containing a link to a form to complete the request.

Guest users are required to provide an SSH public key during the setup process. Detailed instructions are provided in the invitation workflow.

Account renewal and validity

Standard CÉCI accounts are valid for one year and must be renewed annually.

Users are notified by email before expiration. Renewal follows the same procedure as the account creation and requires a confirmation.

Expired accounts can still be renewed, although access is temporarily disabled until renewal is completed.

Guest accounts are valid for 6 months. Renewal requests must be submitted by the supervisor managing the guest account; guests cannot renew their accounts themselves.

Files associated with accounts that remain expired for an extended period may eventually be reviewed for permanent deletion by the system administrators of the hosting institution, in consultation with the designated supervisor. Such review will not take place earlier than 500 days after the account expiration date.

2. Preparing while waiting for approval

While your account request is being processed, we strongly recommend that you familiarize yourself with the basic concepts and tools required to work on the clusters.

Start with the official quick start guide: Connecting to the CÉCI Clusters

This documentation explains:

• How to connect to the clusters via SSH
• Which login nodes to use
• How to properly configure your ~/.ssh/config file

Taking the time to configure your SSH access in advance will save you valuable time once your account is activated.

3. Transferring your data and jobs

Once your account is approved and you have access to the clusters, the next step is to upload your data, scripts, and job files.

Please follow the official guide: Copying Files to the CÉCI Clusters

This section covers common file transfer methods such as scp, rsync, and sftp.

The storage systems available on the CÉCI clusters are not backed up and must not be considered long-term archival storage.

Deleted files cannot be recovered. Users are responsible for maintaining their own backups and for regularly transferring important results and datasets to appropriate long-term storage systems outside the clusters.

4. Running your first job

After your files are in place, you are ready to submit your first job to the scheduler.

CÉCI clusters use Slurm as workload manager. To understand how a cluster is structured and how jobs are submitted: Slurm Tutorial – Anatomy of a Cluster

This documentation explains:

• The architecture of a compute cluster
• The role of login nodes and compute nodes
• The structure of a Slurm job script
• How to submit, monitor, and manage jobs

Once you are comfortable with these concepts, you will be able to efficiently run computations on the CÉCI infrastructure.

5. Next steps

After completing these steps, you should be able to:

• Access the CÉCI clusters securely
• Transfer your data
• Submit and manage jobs using Slurm

We recommend regularly consulting the CÉCI support documentation for more advanced usage and best practices.

6. Acknowledgements

Acknowledging the use of CÉCI computing resources in scientific publications is mandatory. Proper acknowledgements directly contribute to demonstrating the scientific impact of the infrastructure, which is a key element in securing long-term funding for the CÉCI.