The University of Maryland Affiliate Process

1. Overview
2. Information for Sponsors
3. Information for Affiliates

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 at this knowledge-base article . In cases of discrepencies between the two pages, trust the knowledge-base article.

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 requesting affiliate status for the person, and gives the form to their Personnel/Human Resources (PHR) representative to process.
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 email hpcc-accounts@umd.edu with the name of the allocation and the directory ID of the new affiliate. If this is for a new allocation approved by the AAC, the affiliate can send the email. Be sure to include the new directory ID and the name of the new allocation.

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 this knowledge-base article . If there are discrepencies in the information on the two pages, the knowledge-base article is the one you should trust.

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 download and fill out the "Affiliate Data Collection Form" linked to at this knowledge-base article . More information can be found in this knowledge-base article .

• Select 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"

You must then give the completed form to your PHR representative and have them enter the form in the PHR Affiliate module.

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 send email to hpcc-accounts@umd.edu with that directory ID and the name of your allocation, requesting that that 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 will need to go to http://www.it.umd.edu/new to activate your account, etc.

1. Direct your web browser to http://www.it.umd.edu/new
2. Choose "Incoming Faculty/Staff/Affiliate"
3. Click "Start Here"
4. You will be asked for some information to confirm your identity as was collected by your sponsor on the Affiliate Data Collection Form. After confirming your identity, you will be asked to choose a password.
5. On the Account Activation Screen, select:
   • Directory ID. This will create a directory ID for you, which is required for access to UMD Unix systems.
   • IT email. This will set up an UMD email address for you.
   • Terpconnect. This will allow you to activate an Unix account, which is required before you can be granted access to the HPC resources.
   • No other services are required for accessing the Division of IT maintained HPC resources. However, depending on the requirements of your collaboration with other UMD researchers, you might need other services to effectively collaborate. However, that is beyond the scope of this page --- the services listed above are the only ones needed for access to DIT maintained HPC resources.
6. 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 this knowledge-base article or contact the help desk for help in setting up forwarding). The HPC systems staff do not care where you read your email, as long as you read and respond to emails sent to your @umd.edu address.
7. It can take up to 48 hours for the accounts to be set up.
8. Once the accounts are set up, 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 send email to hpcc-accounts@umd.edu to request your Unix account be granted access to the HPC resources using their allocation.
9. Your affiliate status has an expiration of at most one year from the time of creation. You will be sent email to your @umd.edu address as the expiration date approaches. If the account is still needed, you should simply have your sponsor contact their PHR representative to have the affiliate status renewed for another year. There is no limit on how often it can be renewed, but we require a renewal every year.