NRP-Winter2026-Training

Intro to NRP

Overview

Teaching: min
Exercises: min
Questions
Objectives

What is NRP?

NRP is a Kubernetes Cluster

Kubernetes Cluster

Hardware on NRP1

GPU Pie Chart GPU List

Storage Options on NRP

You will learn that Kubernetes runs your workload in objects called Pods, and that Pods are ephemeral by nature. To keep data beyond the lifetime of a Pod, Kubernetes provides persistent storage via PersistentVolume resources, which Pods mount using a PersistentVolumeClaim. NRP offers a variety of storage options to suit different workload and performance needs. NRP

How do I get started?

A full guide to getting started can be found in our documentation.

The first step is to visit nrp.ai and log in at the upper right-hand corner. This should open a CILogon sign-in page. CILogon

Choosing an Identity Provider

We recommend that you select your institution as the identity provider (IdP) in the CILogon page. Other options like google, Microsoft, and ORCID exist, but may face limitations on NRP If you used the wrong IdP and would like to change it, let NRP admins know and we can help.

Where should I ask for help?

The primary option for support is via our Matrix chat. Please use public channels when seeking support, this allows the whole NRP community to offer advice. NRP admins actively monitor and respond to the NRP Support channel in Matrix.

Support News

Cluster Policies

In order to access the cluser, every user must first accept the Acceptable Useage Polcy (AUP).

You can find our cluster usage policies in our docs:https://nrp.ai/documentation/userdocs/start/policies/.

The most important thing to keep in mind is that NRP is a shared resource. Do not request more resources than you need and do not hold resources longer than what is necessary for your work.

Cluster Policies

Let’s Get Started

In the next sections, we will cover interacting with the NRP user portal, how to set-up and manage namespaces on the cluster and how to interact with the cluster.

Top Uses

The majority of NRP users interact with the cluster using the following three methods.

In order to access any of these services, users must first be added as a member of a namespace.

  1. As of Feb 2026 ↩

Namespace and User Management

Overview

Teaching: min
Exercises: min
Questions
Objectives

The Namespace portal

Within a kubernetes cluster, users are organized into groups called namespaces. Within a namespace, members are oganized as either namespace users or namespace admins. Admins are responsible for managing the and monitoring the namespace.

NRP provides a web portal for easy namespace management.

You can view all NRP namespace at https://nrp.ai/viz/namespaces/

The namespace portal allows namespace admins to:

You will see in https://nrp.ai/viz/namespaces/, that the namespace portal organizes NRP groups and namespace into one large tree, with the nrp group as the root. This is mostly for human readability purposes. The general grouping is as follows:

nrp  (root)
└── campus / organization
    └── PI group
        └── sub-projects

One important concept to keep in mind is that there is no such nesting for kubernetes, so it is important to make your namespace names unique.

What namespaces do I belong to?

When you log on and view the namespace portal, you will not see the full namespace tree as you did when viewing https://nrp.ai/viz/namespaces/. Instead, you will see your personal tree, showing all namespace you belong to and which groups they are a part of. Single User Tree You will notice some color-coding as well.

Namespace Management

Prior to launching pods in your namespace, you must fill out some details on the portal. These include:

Managing Users

Namespace admins have the ability to both add and remove user from the namespace as well as to promote and demote users.

Under the Users section of the namespace portal, admin members can add new members by searching for users by name or email in the Add New User field. User Management

Under the Add New User field are a list of members in the namespace and their status as user of admin. Admins will see options to remove members as well as to Make admin or Make not admin. Note that you can only demote user who were promoted by you.

Subgroup Management

Beneath the Users section, you will find the section to Create subgroup, assign Group tenants, and to Delete the group.

When creating a subgroup, you have the option to create a kubernetes namespace (K8s Namespace), a LLM Group, a Milvus database, a combination of these, or a group (by leaving all options de-selected).

Subgroup Management

If your namespace belongs to a group which has hardware on NRP, you can assign a label to your namespace using the Group tenants selector box.

If you need to delete your namespace for any reason, you can do so using the Delete the group button at the bottom of the page.

What are my responsibilities as admin?

An admin’s chief responsibility is to ensure that the namespace and its users adhere to cluster policies.
Subgroup Management

  1. New users must be registered with NRP by first logging into https://nrp.ai and accepting the AUP before they can be added to a namespace. ↩

The NRP User Portal

Overview

Teaching: min
Exercises: min
Questions
Objectives

The NRP User portal

The NRP portal can be accessed from nrp.ai. NRP Portal

This is often your first stop when interacting with NRP. The portal homepage is used to announce NRP events such as our annual meetings and out bi-weekly office hours. Additionally, the portal contains links to many important pages and webtools that you can make use of as a user of the cluster. User Links

Resource Availability

Resources available on NRP include:

Resources are distributed across site known as computing nodes. The following dashboard https://nrp.ai/viz/resources/ displays details about current status of all NRP resources. NRP Dashboard

Notice the taint column!

Taints are labels added to nodes. Taints can be used to indicate a node is reserved for a special purpose or that a node may be marked for maintennance. Pods will not land on tainted nodes unless granted special permissions.

Reservations

Kubernetes uses a constraint- and priority-based scheduler: Pods are scheduled when a node can satisfy their requirements, rather than being served strictly first-in-first-out.

Sometimes you may need special or exclusive access to resources. In such cases, you should fill out a reservation request.

There are two types of reservation requests that you can make at NRP; a request for exclusive access to a particular node or a request for access to A100 GPUs. The request form can be found at https://nrp.ai/reservations/. Reservations

Request Early

Submit requests well ahead of time to guarantee access. NRP admins try to check reservations regularly, but must still review each reservation before providing access.

Include All Information

Please fill out either of these forms completely including any details to help us decide whether or not we can grant the request

A100 Access Requests

A100 GPUs are a special resource on NRP. To ensure that they are used responsibly, users are required to submit an access request form prior to gaining access to these GPUs.

Please note that approval grants the namespace the ability to request X amount of A100 GPUs, but it does not gurantee access; pods are still scheduled according to the availability of the resource.

A100 Form The A100 form us show above. It includes a comment section where you can fill in details about your specific plans to use the A100 GPUs. Importantly, we need your namespace name so we can grant access to your group and we need your matrix ID (found by clicking your profile picture in matrix chat). We try to notify requesters when we approve their request. MatrixID

Node Reservation Requests

Node reservations are also possible, however these are granted only for specific reasons. We do not grant node reservations for single users/groups trying to make a deadline. Some reasons to request a node reservation include:

Node Form

Please include in the comments what types of resources (e.g., number of GPUs/CPUs/memory etc.) you need or, if known, which nodes you would like to reserve.

Tokens

Some services first require registration for a token. These services include:

Intro to Kubernetes and Docker

Overview

Teaching: min
Exercises: min
Questions
Objectives

Requirements

This section will contain some hands-on activities that will require that you have completed the Setup page.

Docker and Kubernetes?

Docker is a platform for building, packaging, and running applications in containers.

Why Docker matters for Kubernetes:

Docker Registry

NRP Dashboard

Where should I ask for help?

The primary option for support is via our Matrix chat.