Glossary

Domain terms used across Custos, grouped by where they originate. Connectors with well-known native vocabulary (e.g. SLURM associations, partitions) are not duplicated here — refer to the relevant upstream docs.

Core domain

Concepts that belong to the Custos core.

  • HPC — High-Performance Computing. The cluster-computing domain Custos serves (e.g. ACCESS-CI sites, university research clusters).
  • Allocation — A grant of compute time on a cluster, attached to a project. Has a start/end date, a resource (cluster), and rates.
  • Allocation membership — A user's tie to an allocation (PI, CO_PI, ALLOCATION_MANAGER, or plain member).
  • PI / CO_PI / ALLOCATION_MANAGER — Project-level governance roles. PI = Principal Investigator (the responsible researcher). CO_PI = Co-Principal Investigator. ALLOCATION_MANAGER = delegated allocation administrator.

Identity & COmanage

Federated identity stack Custos integrates with.

  • CILogon — Federated identity service used by US research-computing communities. Issues OIDC tokens and hosts COmanage.
  • COmanage — Identity registry software from Internet2 used to provision POSIX cluster accounts. Custos talks to a hosted instance via CILogon.
  • DN — Distinguished Name. LDAP identifier for a person (e.g. an X.509 subject DN).

ACCESS-CI / AMIE connector

Terms specific to the ACCESS-CI allocation exchange protocol and its connector (connectors/ACCESS/AMIE-Processor/).

  • AMIE — Account Management Information Exchange. ACCESS-CI's protocol for moving allocation, project, and account state between sites. A REST API plus a packet-and-reply state machine.
  • AMIE packet — One unit of state in the AMIE protocol. Carries a transaction type (e.g. request_project_create, request_account_create).
  • Packet families (request_*, data_*, notify_*, inform_*) — AMIE groups packets by intent. request_* is “do this” (mutating). data_* carries supplementary detail for a prior request (e.g. DNs created in a peer system). notify_* is a reply confirming a request_* succeeded. inform_* carries terminal state, e.g. inform_transaction_complete ends a multi-packet exchange.
  • Site code — Identifier for one ACCESS-CI participating site (e.g. TESTSITE, INDIANA).
  • Person merge (survivor / retiree) — When two AMIE person records turn out to be the same human, AMIE sends a request_person_merge packet that names a survivor (the record to keep) and a retiree (the record to fold into the survivor).