Get a computer account
How to request user accounts on our local and recommended divisional and University resources.
OxCIN Computer Account
An OxCIN computing account will give you a username and password with which you can access various services. All accounts need to be associated with a Principal Investigator who has registered with OxCIN.
For details of which account types are needed for which services see our Account Types page. These accounts may attract a charge, for details on charging see our charging policy page.
Prerequisites
Before you can apply for an account you must first have a University SSO account. We can only allow users who have some form of research agreement with Oxford University to use our computing equipment, your SSO credentials are therefore considered the minimum required authorisation.
If you do not have a University SSO account then you won't be able to log onto our registration site and should contact admin@oxcin.ox.ac.uk to discuss the most appropriate research agreement to obtain one.
Self-service
We operate a self-service registration system at https://register.fmrib.ox.ac.uk which is accessed using your University Single Sign-On (SSO) credentials. Through our registration site you can:
- Manage your personal profile and join your PI's group
- Book and review Magnet Safety Training
- View your building access status for FMRIB
- Manage your membership of some important WIN Centre mailing lists
- Request a computing account.
Requesting
Follow the instructions by selecting a PI from the list of available PIs. This will send an email to the PI asking them to accept you into their group.
Next click on Request a computer account and select an account type from the drop-down list (see Account Types).
Having selected an account type you can click Update and your application will got to your PI for approval.
Once your PI has approved your application to join their group and your OxCIN computing account request, your account will be automatically created and you will get an email inviting you to set the password.
Suspending or closing an account
If an account is no longer needed for day-to-day use, it may be possible to suspend it instead of closing it immediately.
Warning
Suspending an account keeps it on record but stops charges for subsequent months. It cannot be used for any services.
Warning
Accounts will automatically suspend on expiration of the associated SSO account, and then behave as a closed account - see below for important details about any data stored in this account.
Warning
Closing an account will result in ALL data in the home and scratch folder being deleted 30 days after the account closure date. Please ensure that any important data has been handed over to the PI or follow-on research before requesting account closure. Accounts will **automatically
Use the following as a guide:
flowchart TD
A["Account no longer needed for active use"] --> B{"Will the user need access again?"}
B -->|Yes or maybe| C["Suspend the account"]
C --> D["Access is disabled"]
D --> E["Charges stop for subsequent months"]
B -->|No| F["Close the account"]
F --> G["Account is closed"]In general, suspend an account if the pause may be temporary. Close and archive the account when the account is being retired permanently.
If you are unsure which option is appropriate, contact OxCIN IT before making the request.
Troubleshooting
If you don't get a timely response then it is most likely your PI hasn't completed the process. Contact them and ask them to check that the "PI approved" check boxes for both your OxCIN Profile and your OxCIN computing account application have been confirmed. They should have ticked two check boxes. Please point your PI to the local Instructions to PIs page for guidance if required.
OxCIN@BMRC
The medical sciences division compute facility is managed by the BioMedical Research Computing (BMRC) team. Their facilities include a multi-thousand core general compute cluster, GPU facilities (both consumer grade and enterprise class) and high-performance multi-petabyte storage.
Any project that will be processing sensitive (e.g. identifiable to a living individual) datasets will need to complete a privacy assessment. If your research does not involve human subjects or uses a acceptably anonymised dataset, e.g. the UK BioBank dataset, then you may not need to carry out such an assessment.
Anyone wishing to work the the UK BioBank Imaging dataset will require a BMRC account.
Charges
Research groups using the BMRC attract a facility fee, covering the costs of providing the expertise to operate and advise on the best use of their compute facilities. Principal investigators should contact the BMRC directly to arrange for a group account to be created. Charges also apply for use of their CPU and GPU clusters, charged separately, allowing you to opt in or out depending on the needs of your processing.
Invoices are generated quarterly, and contain details on how to pay the fees, along with funder eligibility details (some funders will only pay a portion of the total, researchers will need to discuss with their department what the appropriate mechanism is to fund the remaining portion).
Compute is charged on the basis of 'shares' with 1 share being roughly equivalent to using 1CPU or 'standard' GPU 24x7 for a calendar year. Please contact BMRC help for advice on the charges that will apply.
For small groups we expect that a single CPU and GPU share will be adequate unless you have a specific high-compute requirement. A reasonable estimate of charges for this basic use case is £2000 per year (exclusive of storage charges). Larger groups are likely to need more shares, especially if you experience long wait times for jobs.
Storage
Working disk space is charged on a per TB rental basis, at the time of writing this was attracting a charge of £70 per TB per year.
BMRC storage does not include any backup of data stored on it. Both to protect your valuable research data and for GDPR compliance, any raw and/or publishable/ed data should be securely stored in an additional facility. This could be OxCIN hosted storage, a raw data repository or institutional/national/international repository of research data.
Information governance considerations will require that your request project specific storage folders to allow clean separation of charges and user access control.
Requesting an account
To request an account you first need your Principal Investigator (PI) to have registered with the BMRC facility.
If you are the PI then please send an email to the BMRC support address email requesting the creation of a PI group, an account for yourself (if required), that you are a OxCIN researcher and specifying how much storage you would like to rent along with the number of CPU and GPU shares that your require in the first instance - complete the template email and send on. You should Cc in oxcin-it-managers@ndcn.ox.ac.uk so that we can confirm your affiliation to the BMRC team.
Note
Affiliating with OxCIN will enable OxCIN IT staff to assist with some aspects of your work on BMRC facilities.
If you are a researcher then please send an email to BRMC support - complete this template email, add your supervisor to the list of Cc's and send on.
OxCIN@OHBA
Onboarding
To obtain OHBA workstation access you need the following obtained in sequence:
- An active Oxford Uni SSO. This requires an Oxford University card.
- An active MSD-IT network user account. Request from MSD-IT site using this page.
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For remote off-site ssh OHBA workstation access your MSD-IT network account needs to affiliated to a trusted unit (Psychiatry, Psychology, NDCN, etc). Contact computing-help@oxcin.ox.ac.uk if you have a different affiliation. To this request use the following steps:
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Download and complete OHBA's custom UAR form. In the 'Access Rights Required' select 'wingrp' and your required PI groups to gain access to PI stores on the OHBA servers. 'meggrp' is reserved for users who need to log on to the MEG console. 'megrp' group is not needed for MEG data access via one of the workstations.
- Send filled-in form to OHBA Research Manager or OHBA PI for signing and authorisation.
- Send the OHBA Research Manager/OHBA PI signed form to computing-help@oxcin.ox.ac.uk.
- OxCIN IT should then respond to you to confirm your access is enabled. You should now be able to login to the OHBA workstations. Use the 'id' command in a bash terminal to confirm your group membership includes your chosen access groups.
- It should now be possible to access the OHBA workstation remotely using ssh via the MSD-IT VPN.
Departing
It is your responsibility to ensure that any data you use/generate during your research is deposited in an appropriate location or destroyed before you leave. You should discuss this with your PI in advance of leaving so that any loss of data is avoided.