Was ist ein LRZ-Projekt?

A project or LRZ project is based on a contract between an institution and the LRZ in which the use of LRZ resources and services for a specific purpose is agreed upon in recognition of the LRZ usage guidelines. As described under Assignment of Accounts by Master Users and in the entry What is an institution?, the head of the institution must submit a project application (form "Antrag auf ein LRZ-Projekt" on the page Assignment of Accounts by Master Users).

Each project is assigned an account by the LRZ called a project name, which you will encounter as a Master User in many places in the IDM portal. It allows quick and unique identification of the project and is also used, for example, as a group name on the Linux and Unix computer platforms of the LRZ. The purpose of the project is stored in the "Project name" field and can be updated by you at any time in the "Project | View/modify" menu item.

In principle, an institution can conclude any number of project contracts with the LRZ: here applies 

• that a single project is sufficient for services such as WLAN, e-mail, cloud storage, LRZ Sync+Share and backup/archiving,
• but that a separate project must be applied for per scientific project that uses the LRZ high-performance computer (Linux Cluster, Compute Cloud).
• For the use of the LRZ high-performance computer (SuperMUC-NG), it is always necessary to apply for a separate project for exactly this purpose (see Application for a project on SuperMUC-NG). Special regulations apply to these projects, which will not be discussed further in this FAQ.

LRZ internal processes such as access approval procedures, billing, and statistics operate at the project level.

A project is the contractual, formal framework for creating accounts that allow people to use LRZ resources as users. What ist an LRZ-account? describes its tasks in general, What are the types of LRZ accounts? their variants.

Projects are limited in time and have to be renewed once a year (see also How does the annual project extension work?).

When a new project is set up, the scope of LRZ services to be used is agreed in the form of a project quota. On the one hand, this quota comprises a number of accounts that you, as the master user, can assign to individual users; on the other hand, a number of services and authorizations (e.g. VPN, e-mail, cloud storage, backup/archiving, etc.) that you can distribute among these accounts. Subsequent changes to this project quota are possible at any time, as described in the entry How can I apply for additional accounts and permissions for my project?.