Responsible Executive: Information Technology Services
Approving Official: Research Computing Center Director
Effective Date: June 6, 2023
Revision History: Revised annually
Contents:
I. Introduction
- OBJECTIVE
The purpose of this policy is to ensure proper usage of Research Computer Center (RCC) resources. By using an RCC resource, users agree to abide by the following policies and use RCC resources responsibly. In addition to these policies, RCC users must agree to comply with all technology policies at FSU.
- OVERVIEW
The RCC is an auxiliary unit within the FSU Information Technology Services (ITS) department at Florida State University (FSU). RCC staff will make a reasonable effort to ensure systems and services remain available at all times. RCC staff will periodically plan downtime for system maintenance. In these cases, RCC staff will make efforts to notify all RCC users as far in advance as possible. RCC staff will respond to support requests within one business week of request submission.
II. Policies
- GENERAL USE POLICY
RCC resources are shared with other users, and individual actions impact those users. Many practices that are acceptable on personal devices can seriously impact RCC systems and other users.
- The following is a list of guidelines that RCC users agree to follow. RCC users must abide by all FSU information technology policies. These policies include, but are not limited to:
- RCC users are responsible for the proper use of all RCC tools and for the confidentiality of all sensitive information entrusted to the user.
- RCC users will not attempt to subvert or circumvent any RCC system that allocates resources.
- RCC resources are provided by the university for research and educational use only. Commercial, administrative or non-university-related use of these resources is prohibited unless explicitly agreed upon with the RCC director.
- ACCOUNT POLICY
The RCC grants each person a unique user account on RCC systems. This account is managed by the RCC and is separate from other accounts, such as an FSUID account.
- RCC users must have an active FSUID account before requesting an RCC user account.
- Guest users not affiliated with FSU must apply for a Sponsored Guest FSUID account.
- Each RCC user account may be used only by the person registered for the account.
- Each RCC user account holder is responsible for keeping their login credentials confidential, including passwords, certificates and private SSH keys.
- RCC users are not permitted to share user account credentials with anyone under any circumstance. RCC systems provide mechanisms for sharing data and compute resources with collaborators without the necessity of user account sharing.
- RCC account passwords and credentials must meet the following requirements:
- RCC user account passwords must meet minimum complexity requirements. RCC uses an entropy score to determine the complexity of user account credentials.
- RCC staff reserve the right to require RCC users to change their system account password at any time.
- If RCC staff determines a password reset is warranted for security purposes, RCC will lock the user account until the user changes the password.
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The RCC provides three types of user accounts: faculty user accounts, sponsored user accounts and non-system faculty user accounts. If an individual does not have a faculty affiliation with FSU, they may register for a sponsored user account. This type of account requires the user to select a faculty sponsor during user account creation.
Regulations regarding faculty user accounts are as follows:
- Anyone currently employed in an FSU faculty position can apply for a faculty user account.
- Faculty user account holders are eligible to sponsor user accounts for students, staff or outside collaborators.
- A faculty user account holder who wishes to sponsor another user account must provide explicit approval for any non-faculty person.
- Upon separation from FSU, a faculty user account will be converted into a non-faculty user account. Subsequently, the user account holder and any accounts sponsored by this faculty user must be approved by a new sponsor to continue using RCC resources.
Regulations regarding sponsored user accounts are as follows:
- Any person can apply for an RCC-sponsored user account, including FSU students, staff and collaborators from other institutions not otherwise affiliated with FSU.
- A faculty sponsor must be selected upon registration. RCC voids all user account requests that have not been approved by faculty sponsors after 14 days. After this, the person requesting the sponsored account must resubmit the sponsorship request.
- A sponsored user account holder may request a change in sponsorship at any time. The new sponsor must approve the request within 14 days.
- Upon separation from FSU, no change occurs to the sponsored user account status.
- A sponsored user account holder's sponsor may revoke approval for the sponsored account at any time. If this happens, the sponsored user account holder must select a new sponsor to continue using RCC resources.
- Sponsors must reaffirm approval for all sponsored user accounts at least once annually. If this process is not completed, RCC will revoke approval. In such a case, the sponsored user account holder must either obtain reapproval from the current sponsor or select a new sponsor to continue using RCC resources.
Regulations regarding non-system faculty user accounts are as follows:
- FSU faculty members who do not wish to use RCC system resources but need to sponsor other user accounts can indicate they would like a non-system account during registration.
- Non-system accounts do not have access to any RCC system resources.
- A non-system account holder can request system access at any time.
- Upon separation from FSU, a non-system account will be converted into a non-faculty user account. Subsequently, the account holder and any accounts sponsored by this faculty user must be approved by a new sponsor to continue using RCC resources.
- HIGH PERFORMANCE COMPUTING POLICY
The High Performance Computing (HPC) cluster is a shared resource, and individual actions may impact other users. The HPC cluster is divided into node pools accessible through the job scheduler via the queuing system Slurm.
- Any person with an RCC user account may submit jobs to the general access compute nodes in the HPC cluster.
- People and research groups that have purchased normalized compute units (NCUs) will have priority access to the purchased number of cores via a dedicated Slurm account.
- The following is a list of general rules RCC users agree to follow when using the HPC system:
- RCC users will execute all long-running interactive or non-interactive jobs using the job scheduler Slurm.
- RCC users may not run any long-running or compute-intensive jobs on the login nodes. RCC staff reserve the right to kill any process on login nodes that is judged to be using excessive resources.
- RCC users will allocate parallel jobs within the resources they have requested or reserved via Slurm.
- RCC users will not use excessive resources for any job they submit.
- RCC users will not run highly experimental code that may compromise the usability or integrity of RCC resources.
- SHARED STORAGE POLICY
The RCC provides several shared storage resources. RCC cannot guarantee the complete security of data stored on any RCC storage media.- No RCC systems shall be used for any data classified by FSU as "protected" or "private."
- While RCC staff strive to ensure data on RCC systems is secure and confidential, neither the RCC nor FSU shall be held liable for any breach of security resulting in the compromise of sensitive or confidential data stored on any RCC storage system.
- It is the user's sole responsibility to ensure proper measures have been taken to declassify and protect their data.
- Data stored on RCC resources may be subject to FSU Policy OP-F-3 - Records Management.
- The user is responsible for classifying the type of stored data and what retention and maintenance policies should apply.
- RCC staff reserve the right to remove any data from the system deemed inappropriate, illegal or obsolete.
- The RCC provides no mechanism for backing up data on our storage system. RCC staff will assist users with backing data up to outside storage resources if requested.
- The RCC will allocate each user account a home directory on our parallel storage system.
- RCC staff will purge data from a home directory no sooner than three months after a user account has expired.
- The RCC may provide scratch space on some storage resources. This space will be available for any RCC user account holder to write to and temporarily store data. However, this data is subject to deletion at any time.
- RCC staff are not authorized to copy data from personal home directories on our storage system without explicit, documented permission from the home directory owner due to FERPA regulations.
- VIOLATIONS POLICY
RCC staff may take the following actions if we identify any abuse or willful neglect to follow the policies described in this document:
- RCC staff may suspend or delete compute jobs in violation of these policies.
- RCC staff may delete any data in violation of these policies.
- RCC staff may deactivate any user account in violation of these policies, subject to approval from the RCC director.
- The RCC director reserves the right to temporarily or permanently bar access to all RCC resources. In such cases, the RCC director will communicate any disciplinary action with the user account holder and, if applicable, the sponsor of the user account holder.
- The user account holder has the right to submit an appeal concerning the enforcement of any policy described in this document to the RCC director.
- If the RCC director and the user account holder cannot identify a mutually agreeable resolution, the user account holder may appeal in writing to the RCC Advisory Panel Chair.
- The RCC Advisory Panel Chair will bring appeals to the members of the RCC Advisory Panel for discussion and resolution.
- All RCC Advisory Panel decisions are final.