Responsible Executive: Information Technology Services

Approving Official: Research Computing Center Director

Effective Date: July 11, 2024

Revision History: Revised annually

Contents:

General Use Policy
Account Policy
High Performance Computing Policy
Shared Storage Policy
Purchased Services Expiration
Violations and Enforcement
Support Policy

I. Introduction

A. Objective

This policy ensures proper use of Research Computing 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.

B. 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, except planned maintenance periods. 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.

If you have any questions or remarks about this document, please contact the RCC Director.

II. Policies

A. General Usage Policy

You, the user, understand that RCC resources are shared with other users, and your actions can impact the work of those users. Many practices that are acceptable on your personal devices can have serious impacts on our systems and may affect other users ability to use the system.
The following is a list of guidelines that you agree to follow.
- You must abide by all University Information Technology Policies. These include, but are not limited to:
  - 4-OP-H-20 - FSU Information Technology Security and Information Assurance Policy
  - 4-OP-H-21 - Acceptable Use of Technology Policy
  - 4-OP-H-22 - Privacy Policy
  - 4-OP-H-25.01 - Data Security Standard
  - 4-OP-F-7 - Policy on Safeguarding of Confidential Financial and Personal Information
- You are responsible for the proper use of all tools that the RCC provides and for the confidentiality of any sensitive information entrusted to you.
- You will not attempt to subvert or circumvent any system that allocates resources, including the HPC job scheduler.
RCC resources are provided by the University for research and educational use only. Commercial, administrative, or non-University related use of RCC resources is prohibited unless explicitly agreed to in writing with the RCC Director.

B. Account Policy

RCC grants a unique account on our systems to every eligible person. This account is managed by the RCC and is separate from other accounts, such as your FSUID.
You must have an active FSUID account before you can request an RCC user account.
- Guest users not affiliated with FSU must apply for a sponsored FSUID account.
Each RCC user account may be used only by the person who registered for the account.
Each RCC user account holder is responsible for keeping his or her login credentials secret. This includes passwords, certificates, and private SSH keys.
- Users are not permitted to share account credentials with anyone except in the case of shared lab accounts created by RCC staff and approved by the RCC Director.
- RCC systems provide many mechanisms for sharing data and compute resources with collaborators without the necessity of account credential sharing.
The RCC provides two types of user accounts: faculty user accounts and sponsored user accounts.
- Faculty user accounts
  - Anyone affiliated with FSU in a currently employed faculty position can apply for a faculty user account.
  - Faculty user account holders are eligible to sponsor accounts for students, staff, or outside collaborators.
  - A faculty user account holder who wishes to sponsor an account must provide explicit approval for any non-faculty person.
  - A faculty account holder must periodically re-verify approval for accounts they sponsor.
  - Upon separation from FSU, a faculty user account will be converted to a non-faculty user account. Subsequently, the user account and any accounts sponsored by this faculty user will be required to find and be approved by a new sponsor in order to be able to continue using RCC resources.
- Sponsored (non-faculty) user accounts
  - Any person can apply for an RCC sponsored user account. This includes all FSU students, staff members, and collaborators from other institutions not otherwise affiliated with FSU. A faculty sponsor must be selected upon activation of your RCC account.
  - RCC voids all user account requests that have not been approved by faculty sponsors after 14 days. In this case, the person requesting the sponsored account must select a new sponsor or 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, or the request will be voided.
  - Upon separation from FSU, no change occurs to a sponsored user account status. Sponsored users may continue to use RCC resources regardless of their affiliation with the University as long as their faculty sponsor allows them to.
  - A sponsored user account holder's sponsor may revoke approval for the sponsored account at any time. If this happens, the sponsored account holder must select a new sponsor to continue using RCC resources.
  - Sponsors must re-verify approval for all sponsored accounts at least once annually. If a sponsor has not verified approval for a user account within that period, RCC will revoke sponsorship and lock the sponsored user’s account. In such a case, the sponsored account holder must either obtain re-approval from the current sponsor or select a new sponsor to continue using RCC resources.
Non-System faculty user accounts
- FSU faculty members who do not wish to use system resources but need to sponsor other users can indicate that they would like a non-system account.
- Non-system user accounts do not have access to any RCC resources.
- A non-system user account holder can request access to system resources at any time.
Security credentials
- Your RCC user account password must meet minimum complexity requirements. RCC uses an entropy score to determine how complex your user account password is.
- RCC staff reserve the right to require you to change your user account password at any time.
- If RCC staff determines that a password reset is warranted for security purposes, RCC will lock your account until you change your password.

C. High Performance Computing Policy

The High-Performance Computing (HPC) cluster is a shared resource, and you must consider other users when using the system.
The HPC cluster is divided up into node pools that are accessible through the job scheduler via a queueing system (Slurm). Access to those node pools is granted through Slurm accounts, also known as “queues” or “partitions”.
- The RCC provides free general access resources in the HPC cluster.
- Any person with an RCC user account can submit jobs to general access resources made available through general access nodes in the cluster. This is a courtesy resource provided to all user account holders by RCC. These resources are listed on the RCC website.
- People and research groups that have purchased Normalized Computing Units (NCU) will receive priority access to the purchased resources via a dedicated Slurm account.
The following is a list of general rules that you agree to follow:
- You will execute all long-running interactive or non-interactive jobs using the job scheduler (Slurm).
  - You may not run any long-running or CPU or memory intensive jobs on the login nodes.
  - RCC staff reserve the right to terminate any process on login nodes that we judge to be using excessive resources.
- You will allocate parallel jobs within the resources (processors and RAM) that you have requested or reserved via the job scheduler (Slurm).
- You will execute software in a responsible manner by not running highly experimental code that may compromise the usability or integrity of RCC resources without express written permission from the RCC Director. These include login nodes, network fabric, compute nodes, and the shared storage system.
The objectives of the job scheduler (Slurm) are as follows:
- Provide predictable, responsive, and flexible means for a person to access compute resources (CPU, memory, disk) across the HPC cluster.
- Provide fair and equitable access to resources in the HPC to maximize cluster availability to the FSU research community.

D. Shared Storage Policy

The RCC provides several shared storage resources. RCC will perform best security practices, but because of the shared nature of these resources, RCC cannot guarantee complete security of data stored on any RCC storage media.
No systems shall be used for any data classified by FSU as “high risk” as defined in ITS Policy 4-OP-H-25 (Data Security Standard).
- While RCC Staff strive to ensure that data on RCC systems is secure and confidential, neither the RCC nor the Florida State University shall be held liable for any breach of security resulting in the compromise of sensitive or confidential data stored on any RCC storage media.
- It is the user's sole responsibility to ensure proper measures have been taken to de-classify and/or protect their data.
Data stored on RCC resources may be subject to the FSU policy on Record Management; including, but not limited to OP-F-3 – Records Management:
- It is up to the user to classify the type of data being stored and what retention and maintenance policy should apply.
RCC staff reserve the right to remove any data from our system deemed inappropriate, illegal, or obsolete when instructed by security and privacy officers at FSU.
RCC does not provide a central mechanism for backing up data on our storage systems.
- RCC staff will assist individual users or groups with backing up to outside services.
RCC will allocate each user account with a home directory on our parallel storage system.
- RCC will purge data from a home directory no sooner than three months after a user account has expired.
RCC may provide scratch space on some storage resources. This space will be accessible for any RCC user account holder to temporarily store data. However, this data is subject to deletion at any time.
Due to FERPA regulations, RCC staff are not authorized to copy or delete data from personal home directories from sponsored accounts on our storage system without explicit, documented permission from the home directory owner.

E. Purchased Services Expiration

RCC staff will make a concerted effort to notify customers of expiring resources that have been leased or purchased on our systems.These resources include, but are not limited to:
- High Performance Computing Normalized Compute Units (NCUs),
- storage volumes,
- virtual machines
Notification methods include, but are not limited to:
- On-demand self-service through our website,
- Periodic notification emails
RCC provides shared group volumes that users can use to collaborate with each other.
If a person or research group purchases a shared volume for a set period (e.g., the duration of a research grant), RCC staff will purge data in that volume no earlier than one year after the expiration of the volume.
- RCC staff will make reasonable attempts to contact the manager(s) of the shared research volume before purging any data from our systems.

F. Violations and Enforcement

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; and/or
- RCC staff may disable 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 any or all RCC resources.
The RCC Director will communicate any disciplinary action with the user account owner and, if applicable, the sponsor of the account.
- In such cases, the RCC Director or delegate will communicate any disciplinary with the user account holder and, if applicable, the sponsor of the user account holder.
The user account holder can submit an appeal about 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, then the user account holder may appeal in writing to the RCC Management Board.
- The RCC Management Board will bring appeals to the members of the Advisory Panel for discussion and resolution.
- All Advisory Panel decisions are final.

G. Support Policy

RCC staff will make a reasonable effort to ensure systems and services always remain available.
RCC staff periodically plan downtime for maintenance. In these cases, RCC staff will make efforts to notify all users as far in advance as possible.
RCC staff will resolve service failures in a reasonable time during regular operating hours and will make a reasonable attempt to notify users about unexpected outages
RCC staff will provide support for services during regular operating hours
- Regular operating hours are defined as Monday-Friday, 8am - 5pm, excepting University holidays.
RCC staff will respond to support requests within two business days of request submission.

Research Computing Center Policy