Acceptable Use Policy (AUP)

CIRC Resource Usage Policies and Guidelines

The following policies and guidelines have been agreed upon by the Center for Institutional Research Computing (CIRC) Advisory Committee. These policies and guidelines may be amended from time to time.

By using CIRC high-performance computing (HPC) resources you (the “user”) agree to the following.

Accounts

1. Every WSU user account is associated with a WSU faculty sponsor. Third-party users from external research partners similarly require an internal WSU sponsor. Sponsors are responsible for properly vetting users working under their auspices and for the behavior of these users. Users agree that sponsors for their account are entitled to regulate, limit, suspend, or terminate their access.
2. Accounts that are not used for more than a year are subject to deletion. Access to CIRC resources will end six months after users are no longer affiliated with WSU.
3. Users agree to acknowledge the use of CIRC resources in publications. The following wording is recommended: “This research used resources of the Center for Institutional Research Computing at Washington State University.”
   In addition, if the GPU nodes in the Camas partition are used in research, users agree to acknowledge their use in publications with the following wording, as per the Recipient Obligations of the NSF Proposal & Award Policies & Procedures Guide (PAPPG). “This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Award No. CNS-2216108.”
4. Users agree to protect their access credentials in accordance with applicable WSU policies.
5. Users agree to comply with applicable WSU policies, contracts, and legal obligations, including intellectual property rights and confidentiality agreements.
6. Users agree that violations of the policies in this AUP may result in loss of access to CIRC resources, including termination of accounts.

Usage

1. CIRC resources are to be used primarily for research. They can be used for instruction only with prior approval from CIRC.
2. CIRC HPC resources should not be used to process, store, or transmit confidential or regulated information as defined in WSU UPPM 87.01 and UPPM 87.53. CIRC HPC resources do not meet the standards of NIST CUI, DoD NISPOM, HIPAA, EAR, or ITAR, and should not be used to process, store, or transmit information governed by these regulations. In general, the use of cloud services that support security standards and compliance certifications is recommended for the processing of confidential or regulated information.
3. All applications and installs must be run on compute nodes. Applications or installs running on anything other than compute nodes will be subject to immediate termination without notice. Moreover, for security, users will not be granted direct administrative/root level access to HPC resources.
4. Owners have priority access to the nodes they own. Workloads (aka “jobs”) are subject to preemption if an owner’s workload needs their own resources to be able to run. Users are responsible for check-pointing their workloads to be able to restart efficiently in the event of preemption.
5. Because CIRC resources are shared among all users, users should gauge their needs accurately and avoid oversubscribing in their requests for compute resources.
6. Licensed software may only be installed on CIRC resources if the license permits its use for research on multiple computers across a network. Users are responsible for ensuring that any software they install or request to be installed on CIRC resources abides by license agreements.

Storage

1. Each user is provided a home folder at no cost, and each faculty sponsor in addition is provided a lab folder at no cost. Additional lab storage for use in research on the HPC clusters is available upon request from CIRC.
2. Home and lab folders are not backed up except for filesystem snapshots. Additional backups beyond that are the responsibility of the user.
3. Temporary scratch storage is available to all users for their workloads. Scratch directories are subject to automatic deletion, without notice, when their time limit of two weeks expires.

Maintenance

1. The use of CIRC resources and services is at the user’s own risk. CIRC will use its best efforts to maintain a functional research computing resource but makes no warranty that resources or services will be available at all times, that they will suit every purpose, or that data will never be lost or corrupted.
2. CIRC resources may be periodically unavailable for scheduled maintenance. Notice of these events will be provided.
3. CIRC resources may be unavailable without notice, and running workloads may be subject to termination, if hardware, software, or other issues necessitate immediate maintenance to prevent interruption or loss of service.
4. Users shall comply with requests by CIRC staff regarding workload submission and resource usage that are needed to prevent interruption or loss of service.
5. An owner’s compute resources whose warranty has expired will remain in service at the owner’s discretion, so long as they are maintained in a functional state by the owner and there are sufficient resources in the data center facility to support them. The owner will be responsible for providing any needed funds for replacement of parts that are out-of-warranty, and CIRC will coordinate their purchase and installation. Decommissioned compute resources will be returned to the owner, if they so choose.

Investment in Nodes and Storage

1. The configurations of compute resources available for purchase will be posted on the hpc.wsu.edu website. Purchases are subject to the availability of data center facilities to support them, including power, cooling, rack space, and networking.
2. Additional lab storage for use in research on the HPC clusters is available upon request from CIRC, either through CIRC service center rentals or, as appropriate, allocated from department-managed storage pools. In the case of lapsed rentals, lab storage will be made read-only for one year and then archived offline. No storage systems beyond those provided by CIRC will be installed or maintained on behalf of or by users on the HPC clusters.