Policies
Access
Users will only be granted access to use the KU Community Cluster if they are a part of an active research group that has purchased hardware within the KU Community Cluster. All users require a KU Online ID with no exceptions to gain access to the KU Community Cluster. Access will be granted to external collaborators through Sponsored Temporary Accounts.
Six Hour
If the hardware allocated to any given research group should prove insufficient to the needs of a researcher within that group, there exists a "sixhour" partition containing all compute resources that are part of the KU Community Cluster. Any user is allowed to run jobs in this queue, provided that their job does not run for more than six hours at one time. The Center for Research Computing asks that all users be good stewards of this partition, if the resources within the user's host partition can fit their needs then please use that partition. If it is found that this resource is being abused to the detriment of other users, access can be revoked to the "sixhour" partition at the discretion of the Center for Research computing.
Proper Node Usage
The cluster is comprised of two submit nodes, several compute nodes, and administrative nodes. Users are to submit their computationally intensive executable jobs to the compute nodes only. Submit nodes are to be used only for small tasks such as word processing, viewing job results, etc. Processes that are ran on the submit nodes are given only 60 minutes of CPU time. Any process using more than 60 minutes of CPU time will be killed automatically.
The submit nodes are the shared gateway to the cluster for all users. Any user found to be running CPU or memory intensive programs on these submit nodes or any other node that is not a compute node, the user's processes will be cancelled and the user warned through email. Any subsequent offense and the user may have their access revoked at the discretion of the Center for Research Computing. If it is necessary to have an active shell to view live results of an executable, run an interactive job.
Cluster Storage Backup
No backups are done on any file system on the KU Community Cluster. Users are responsible for their own backups, the Center for Research Computing will not create any automatic backups for any user and is not responsible for the deletion or loss of any files from the cluster file system.
Scratch Space
The scratch space on the cluster file system is open to all users of the cluster with no space limitations other than the physical limitations of available hard drive space. To keep this shared space clean and available for all users, any file found to be more than 60 days old on the scratch segment of the file system will be automatically deleted. Any user found trying to bypass this will be warned and any subsequent offenses may result in the user's access being revoked. The scratch space is short term storage for immediate use in computation. Any files that need to be kept longer should be kept in a user's $HOME, $WORK, or another storage medium.
Data Classification and Handling Policy
In accordance with the Data Classification Policy set forth by the KU Information Technology department, only data classified as Level III (pdf) is allowed on the KU Community Cluster. The cluster is not configured to handle any other type of data classification properly. If you are found to have any other data other than Level III data on the KU Community Cluster, your account will immediately be suspended, all your jobs cancelled, and effected files removed.