Coming Summer 2016: PennAuth for Wharton HPC Services

What’s Happening, and Why?

In compliance with Wharton and Penn’s plans to more thoroughly integrate user accounts, we will be moving to Penn authentication (PennAuth) in the Summer of 2016. PennAuth provides higher levels of accountability and compliance with current research security standards, as well as a more seamless experience across Penn for users and administrators.

What this means for you, as a Wharton HPC user, depends on your status at Wharton.

University of Pennsylvania Faculty, Staff or Students

As a member of the Penn community (you already have a ‘PennKey’ and password), the only change for you will be that you will log into all HPC services with your PennKey and password instead of your Wharton username and password.

All Other Users (generally Co-Authors & non-Penn RAs)

As a co-author or non-Penn research assistant (RA), you qualify (with the support of an official faculty or staff sponsor) as having an official business need for a university Guest PennKey. Following the switch to PennAuth in the summer, all HPC users will be required to have and use a PennKey and password to log into all HPC services.

  • If you are a new HPC user, prior to applying for an HPC account you will work with your faculty sponsor and Wharton departmental IT representative(s) (who will work with Wharton’s Accounts Team) to obtain a PennKey and password. The process is easy and generally takes about a day, and is generally documented at Penn’s “How to Sponsor a Guest” PennKey information page.
  • If you already have a Wharton account, but no PennKey, you will be contacted by your Wharton departmental IT representative(s) (who will work with Wharton’s Accounts Team) to work through the process of obtaining a PennKey and password. Once you have a PennKey and password, Wharton Research Computing staff will migrate your current account (username and directory structure) over to your new PennKey username.*

Please get in touch with Research Computing staff if you have a new PennKey and would like to migrate, or you have any questions regarding this process.

* you may-or-may-not be able to keep your current Wharton username, depending on some details at the university level. Custom names like these require a ‘Persistent’ account, which requires a US social security number (SSN) to be declared.

About

With two decades of experience supporting research and more than a decade at The Wharton School, Hugh enjoys the challenges and rewards of working with world-class researchers doing Amazing Things with research computing. Robust and scalable computational solutions (both on premise and in The Cloud), custom research programming solutions (clever ideas, simple code), and holistic, results-focused approaches to projects are the places where Hugh lives these days. On weekends you're likely to find him running through the woods with a topo map and compass, orienteering.