To improve the performance and reliability of the Pleiades Front-End (PFE) systems for all users, on Tuesday, September 17 we are rolling out a tool called Arbiter to track users’ total memory and CPU usage on the PFEs. If a user exceeds the default usage limits on a PFE, Arbiter will reduce the memory and CPU resources available to that user on the PFE for a period of time, and will notify the user via email.

The hard quota limits for each user are 4 cores for CPU usage and 8 gigabytes (GB) for memory usage. The soft quota limits for each user are 2 cores for CPU usage and 4 GB of memory usage.

We encourage you to run any resource-intensive tasks on the compute nodes rather than on the PFEs to support the availability and reliability of the PFEs for all users.

For details, see Usage Quotas on Pleiades Front Ends.

If you have any questions or concerns, please contact the Control Room at (800) 331‑8737, (650) 604‑4444, or support@nas.nasa.gov.

Original notification: September 9. 2024