Coldfront is an open source resource allocation system designed to provide a central portal for administration, reporting, and measuring scientific impact of HPC resources. Coldfront was created to help HPC centers manage access to a diverse set of resources across large groups of users and provide a rich set of extensible meta data for comprehensive reporting. Coldfront is written in Python and released under the GPLv3 license.

• Allocation/Subscription based system for managing access to resources
• Collect Project, Grant, and Publication data from users
• Define custom attributes on resources and subscriptions
• Email notifications for expiring/renewing access to resources
• Integration with 3rd party systems for automation and access control
• Center director approval system and annual project reviews

If you would like a live demo followed by QA, please contact us at [email protected]. You can also contact us for general inquiries and installation troubleshooting.

If you would like to join our mailing list to receive news and updates, please send an email to [email protected] with no subject, and the following command in the body of the message:

subscribe [email protected] first_name last_name

Coldfront requires Python 3.6, memcached, and redis.

Install EPEL then install required packages:

sudo yum install epel-release
sudo yum install python36 python36-devel memcached redis

For Django 2.2 on CentOS 7.5+, you will also need a newer version of sqlite installed and available to the user that will run the ColdFront App.

wget https://www.sqlite.org/2019/sqlite-autoconf-3280000.tar.gz
tar -xvf sqlite-autoconf-3280000.tar.gz
cd sqlite-autoconf-3280000 || exit
./configure
make -j "$(nproc)"
sudo make install

Once installed, you will need to add /usr/local/bin to PATH (if not already there for the user that will run ColdFront. You will also need to add /usr/local/lib to LD_LIBRARY_PATH

export PATH=/usr/local/bin:${PATH}
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/lib:${LD_LIBRARY_PATH}

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:jonathonf/python-3.6
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install python3.6 python3.6-venv memcached redis-server

Clone Coldfront in a new directory and create a Python virtual environment for Coldfront

mkdir coldfront_app
cd coldfront_app
git clone https://github.com/ubccr/coldfront.git
python3.6 -mvenv venv

Activate the virtual environment and install the required Python packages

source venv/bin/activate
cd coldfront
pip install wheel
pip install -r requirements.txt

Copy config/local_settings.py.sample to config/local_settings.py.

cp config/local_settings.py.sample config/local_settings.py

Open config/local_settings.py and update the following:

• Update SECRET_KEY. Consider making the length at least 50 characters long.
• Update TIME_ZONE if necessary
• Uncomment line EMAIL_ADMIN_LIST
• Uncomment line EMAIL_DIRECTOR_EMAIL_ADDRESS

Copy config/local_strings.py.sample to config/local_strings.py and update if desired.

cp config/local_strings.py.sample config/local_strings.py

Run initial setup

python manage.py initial_setup

Optional: Add some test data

python manage.py load_test_data

Start development server

python manage.py runserver 0.0.0.0:8000

• Point your browser to http://localhost:8000
• You can log in as admin with password test1234.
• You can log in as a PI using username cgray with password test1234.
• You can log in as another PI using username sfoster with password test1234.

Password for all users is also teset1234.

• coldfront
  • core - The core Coldfront application
    • field_of_science
    • grant
    • portal
    • project
    • publication
    • resource
    • subscription
    • user
    • utils
  • libs - Helper libraries
    • plugins - Plugins that can be configured in Coldfront
      • freeipa
      • iquota
      • ldap_user_search
      • mokey_oidc
      • slurm
      • system_monitor

Coldfront is released under the GPLv3 license. See the LICENSE file.