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The UMD Affiliate Process

This page discusses the affiliate process at the University of Maryland, primarily concerning itself with aspects relevant to the UMD HPC clusters.

Overview

With over 40,000 faculty, staff, and students at the University, managing accounts for everyone can be tricky. In general, we tie accounts to either employment records or student registration records. However, we are aware that there are sometimes legitimate needs to grant accounts to the HPC clusters to people not formally attached to the university. The Affiliate process exists for these cases.

Note

This page contains some general information related to the affiliate process intended to help HPC users. More detailed and more definitive information on the UMD affiliate process can be found in the following DIT knowledgebase article In cases of discrepencies between the two pages, trust the knowledge-base article over this page.

The affiliate process requires that the non-UMD person has a faculty member or exempt staffperson sponsor them; typically this would be the faculty member they are collaborating with. The basic process for getting access to the clusters in these cases is:

  1. The non-UMD person (affiliate) contacts their sponsor about sponsoring them for affiliate status.
  2. The sponsor fills out a form with PHR requesting a affiliate status for the person, and gives the form to their Personnel/Human Resources (PHR) representative to process. This involves several steps and approval by responsible personnel in the department.
  3. The affiliate must go to a web site to complete an identity proofing procedure, and then to activate the necessary services.
  4. After the services are activated, the point of contact for the allocations to which the affiliate should have access (the point of contact will usually be the sponsor) should contact HPC staff to have the affiliate added to the PI's allocation. If this is for a new allocation approved by the AAC, the affiliate can send the email. Be sure to include the affiliate's directory ID and the name of the allocation(s).

Because affiliates are by definition not in our employment and student registration records, we cannot use that information to determine when the affiliate's account is no longer needed. So every affiliate has an expiration date of at most one year in the future. If an affiliate account is needed for more than one year, the sponsor can have the affiliate status renewed indefinitely, but we require that this be done at least once a year to avoid having large numbers of accounts that have not been used in years.

The information on this page is provided as a courtesy to the UMD HPC community, but for more (and more definitive) information about affiliate the status and the process of becoming/sponsoring affiliates can be found in the DIT knowledgebase article

Information for the Sponsor

The sponsor can be any faculty member or exempt staff member of the University of Maryland. The sponsor will need to work with their departmental PHR representative to make the affiliate request. For more information, see this DIT knowledgebase article

  • Request either a Basic Affiliate or Regular Affiliate
  • The expiration date can be no longer than one year from the effective date. If the affiliate will need access for longer than one year, select one year. You will then need to renew the affiliate status in a year.
  • The following services need to be checked:
    • Directory ID
    • OIT Email
    • TerpConnect account (formerly listed as WAM/Glue account)
    • Publish Affiliate in Directory
  • For "Purpose of Affiliation", select "Researcher"

Once the affiliate request has been entered and approved, you need to contact the affiliate and have them go through the steps below.

When the affiliate has completed those steps, he/she should notify you with their directory ID (the portion of their @umd.edu email address to the left of the @). You should then contact HPC staff with that directory ID and the name of your allocation, requesting that this person be granted access to your allocation. You both should receive a welcome email notifying that the access was granted, usually within one business day.

Information for the Affiliate (non-UMD person)

In order to gain access to one of the Division of IT maintained HPC clusters, you will need a faculty member or exempt staff person to sponsor you. Your sponsor will then need to complete the steps above, at which point they should contact you so you can proceed with some steps on your part.

You might need to go to http://www.it.umd.edu/new to activate your account, etc.

Note

HPC systems staff will use your @umd.edu email address to contact you. You are REQUIRED respond to such messages in a timely fashion. If you prefer to use another address, you can have your @umd.edu mail forwarded elsewhere. See:

Note

It can take up to 48 hours for the accounts to be set up.

Once your affiliate account is activated, contact your sponsor and provide them your new directory ID (the part of your @umd.edu email address to the left of the @). They will then need to add you to their allocation.