RCC Policies

Introduction
Definitions
Resource Usage
Eligibility and Access
Identity Management
Resource Allocation
Security
Storing Sensitive Information on RCC Resources
Resolving Disagreements about Revocation of Privileges or Provisioning
System Maintenance and Downtime
Adding Department or Grant-Sponsored Resources to the RCC

Introduction to RCC Policies

The following policies are subject to revision, especially as the RCC grows during its first months and years. Your comments and questions will be useful to our policy formulation and refinement and are solicited (nesmithj@uga.edu).

This system is for the use of authorized users only. Individuals using this computer system without authority, or in excess of their authority, are subject to having all of their activities on this system monitored and recorded by system personnel. In the course of monitoring individuals improperly using this system, or in the course of system maintenance, the activities of authorized users may be monitored.

Anyone using this system expressly consents to such monitoring and is advised that if such monitoring reveals possible evidence of criminal activity, system personnel may provide the evidence of such monitoring to law enforcement officials.

Anyone using this system expressly consents to abide by the policies of the University of Georgia Research Computing Center and, accordingly, is subject to account termination and/or immediate disconnect from RCC resources.

Definitions

Account

The collection of information related to an authorized user of resources, including resource usage statistics.

Active Account

An account belonging to a person currently authorized to access resources.

Home Directory

Disk storage space assigned to each user with an active account, used to store temporary or permanent files. At the RCC, there is one and only one Home Directory per Active Account, regardless of the compute resource(s) used by the account holder.

Account Holder

The authorized person responsible for an Active Account.

RCC Resource Usage

The computational resources of the Research Computing Center are to be used in direct support of research programs at the University of Georgia. Support is also provided for graduate-level classes that teach computational research methods, however, general purpose or instructional accounts are not supported.

RCC policies supplement UGA's Computer and Use Policies. (http://www.uga.edu/compsec/).

RCC Eligibility and Access

Access to and use of the computing facilities managed by the Research Computing Center are limited to persons affiliated with the University of Georgia and associated with research projects sponsored by UGA.

Direct affiliation in this context means faculty, staff and students of the University of Georgia. Faculty includes persons holding permanent or temporary appointments as well as adjunct faculty, instructors and visiting faculty while in residence at the University. It also includes those persons with faculty status such as research associates, research scientists, post-doctoral researchers and academic and service professionals. Staff includes all those non-faculty persons employed directly by the University in a research-support role. Graduate and undergraduate students who are members of faculty research labs are eligible for accounts as well.

For directly affiliated users, accounts on the RCC computers will remain active as long as the researchers hold the above status.

Access by researchers affiliated with the University of Georgia that do not meet the criteria above will be considered on a case-by-case basis, especially researchers not directly affiliated with the University of Georgia who are collaborating on research with researchers directly affiliated with UGA Requests for access must be forwarded to the RCC in such cases by a person directly affiliated with UGA.

For indirectly affiliated users, access will be granted for a fixed period of time, according to the expected length of the collaborative project, but no longer than one (1) year. Application for extensions will be considered.

Accounts will remain active no more than 30 days following a status change (i.e., leaving the university). Graduate instructional accounts will only remain active for the duration of the semester in which they are actually needed. Home directories will be archived for at least 90 days, but no longer than 180 days after an account becomes inactive.

Requests for access by individuals other than those listed above should first be directed to the manager of the center using the form provided.

RCC Identity Management

Below are described the procedures for validating the identity of account users.

Directly Affiliated Users

All directly affiliated persons requesting an account must apply for access to the RCC using the form provided on the RCC website (http://www.rcc.uga.edu/contact/account.htm). The applicant must authenticate to the form using his/her MyID and password for identification. (If the applicant does not know his/her UGA MyID or password, go to https://www.arches.uga.edu/myid/cp- form.html for retrieval of that information.)

The user will provide a temporary password on the form. The applicant's UGA MyID in conjunction with the temporary password will be used to login to RCC resources; however, the RCC will NOT record a user's MyID password or his/her Social Security number.

Upon acceptance of the application, the user will be notified via e-mail. The user can then proceed to login to the approved RCC resources.

Indirectly Affiliated Users

Indirectly affiliated users must be sponsored by a directly affiliated user. The directly affiliated user must apply on behalf of the applicant using the form provided on the RCC website www.rcc.uga.edu. As part of the form, the sponsor must provide their own UGA MyID. Upon acceptance of the application the sponsoring user will be notified via e-mail of their affiliate’s acceptance or denial.

If accepted, the sponsor will be directed to a website where they will be required to enter their UGA MyID and their UGA MyID password to verify their identity and must authenticate their identification using their MyID and password. If the verification is successful, the sponsored indirect affiliate will be notified via e-mail with an assigned logon ID and temporary password.

Protection of Passwords

An account holder must never divulge their logon id and password to a third party. Only authorized account holders may access the resources of the RCC. If a third party is found to be using an account holder’s login with the permission of the account holder, the account holder’s access privileges may be revoked at the sole discretion of the RCC Manager or Director.

RCC Resource Allocation

Mass Storage Provisioning

Home Directories

All RCC account holders will automatically be allocated a maximum quota of 1GB of network attached storage for their Home Directory. The home directory (on network attached storage) is accessible by any of the compute resources in the RCC, so only one home directory will be allocated per account holder.

The account holder may request a maximum home directory quota of up to 10GB. The request must state the purpose of the additional provision.

Requests for up to 100GB home directory mass storage quota must be submitted by the Principal Investigator on behalf of the account holder. In the case of indirectly affiliated users, the request must come from the Principal Investigator directly affiliated with UGA and sponsoring the account holder.

Requests for mass storage quotas above 100GB must be submitted by the Account Holder’s (or sponsor’s) Department Head.

Shared Data Sets

Data sets, used by more than one account holder may be stored on short term or long term bases. Storage for shared data sets of up to 10GB may be requested by a Principal Investigator. Requests for larger shared data set storage must be submitted by a Department Head. Storage will be allocated based on current and future availability and the perceived relative benefit to UGA’s research and instruction missions.

Printing

In order to simplify support requirements, the RCC does not support the direct printing of reports or program output to printers. Instead, users may direct print files to the account holder’s computer for local printing at the account holder’s facility.

Security

To minimize disruption of service, protect data integrity, conserve facility resources and maximize the effectiveness of staff support, the RCC maintains strict security requirements for access to RCC resources. Over time, the enforcement of these requirements will become increasingly strict, with the goal of preventing any access to the RCC resources by any person or any device that is not in strict compliance with these requirements.

User-Managed Servers, Clusters, Networks and Desktop Computers

Operating Systems

Any computer accessing the RCC for any purpose must meet minimum levels of operating system versions and update (patch) levels. The RCC will, from time to time, publish these minimum requirements on its website.

Anti-Virus Software

Any computer accessing the RCC for any purpose must meet minimum levels of anti-virus protection. Any computer used by an account holder must have anti-virus software from a source approved by the RCC, must have that virus protection activated, and must have automatic updates activated for the anti-virus software.

Suspiciously Behaving Software

Any software that behaves in a suspicious manner may at any time be terminated and/or deleted from RCC resources at the sole discretion of the RCC’s system administrator(s), manager, director, or security staff.

Suspiciously Behaving Networks and Devices

Any connection from any device to the RCC may be terminated at any time, if the device or the connection or a network to which the device is attached appears to be incompliant with the RCC’s security requirements, seems to be behaving suspiciously, or if a threat emerges requiring termination for intrusion prevention at the sole discretion of the RCC’s system administrator(s), manager, director, or security staff.

Account Holder Responsibility

The account holder is responsible for diligently monitoring and meeting the RCC’s operating system, intrusion and virus protection standards.

An account holder’s privileges to use RCC facilities may be terminated by the RCC Manager or Director at any time, without notice if, in the opinion of either, the account holder is reluctant or averse to practicing diligence in meeting the RCC’s minimum requirements for intrusion and/or anti-viral protection.

Storing Sensitive Information on RCC Resources

Sensitive, Private, or Classified Information

The RCC does NOT currently warrant that its practices or facilities meet government-mandated requirements for the storage and protection of sensitive, private or classified information. Users may not store such information on RCC facilities.

Intellectual Property

The RCC strives to protect documents, code, and results data on behalf of account holders. However, the RCC does not assume responsibility for unauthorized access or data loss due to human or system error.

Resolving Disagreements about Revocation of Privileges or Provisioning

If an account holder is denied a request for provisioning of RCC resources or resource privileges are revoked, the user’s Department Head may appeal to the Vice President for Research. The decision of the Vice President for Research is final.

System Maintenance and Downtime

Planned Maintenance

From time to time, RCC systems will perform maintenance operations requiring system operation to be reduced or interrupted. The RCC will schedule and publish planned outages at least 30 days in advance. Reductions in service which do not cause interruption of service may not be published. Job submissions that require the resource to be maintained will be held beginning twenty-four (24) hours before the planned outage of that resource. Any jobs which have been running less than 48 hours before the outage are subject to termination.

In the case where a job or jobs have been running more than 48 hours, the account holder who owns the job will be contacted. RCC staff will attempt to facilitate the needs of the researcher, in such cases.

Unplanned Maintenance and System Outage

From time to time, hardware, software, and environmental factors may cause a system or subsystem to malfunction, causing disruption to service. Also, there may be circumstances or events related to possible security or intrusions which will cause RCC staff to take systems offline while the nature of the apparent breach is analyzed and appropriate action is taken.

Whenever possible, account holders will be notified by e-mail of these outages in advance, but that may not always be possible. Account holders will be notified by e-mail if the disruption should last more than 30 minutes.

RCC staff will strive to preserve the work and/or prevent disruption of jobs in process during such outages. However, there may be circumstances which cause disruption of jobs and loss of data. Users are encouraged to implement methods in their code which minimize the effect of unplanned interruption of a job’s execution, such as checkpoints.

Adding Department or Grant-Sponsored Resources to the RCC

Researchers may benefit by adding resources sponsored by grants or departments to the RCC. In many cases, the cost of doing so will be less than the researcher’s acquisition and maintenance of the resources to their own lab.

Usage Model

When a department or research project sponsors the addition of compute power, storage capacity, and/or software to the RCC’s compliment of high performance computing, the project will have access to the resource capacities that they have sponsored, throughout the duration of the research project, or as agreed upon in a separate service level agreement. When the project could benefit from resources beyond those that the project sponsored, if those resources are available through the RCC, they will be allocated to the project.

When the resources sponsored by a project are not being used by the project, they will become available to other projects.

The project will benefit from the security, environmental, and system administration provided by the RCC.

Usage Policy Enforcement

The RCC strives to enforce this usage model through the use of resource management software. From time to time the software may not perform in accordance with the policy. Such events, when detected, should be reported to the RCC system administrator or manager so that corrective action can be taken to prevent such events in the future.

The RCC does not warrant that the system management software will always perform according to RCC policies.

Funding Model

During the grant design and writing process, RCC staff, in collaboration with the Office of the Vice President for Research Office of Sponsored Programs, is available to assist in estimating the level of computing, storage, network bandwidth, software, and services required to meet the objectives of the research project. RCC staff will provide the cost of acquiring, installing, and maintaining these resources (in compliance with the architectures of the RCC) over the life of the grant.

If the grant is awarded, the RCC will acquire and implement the resources sponsored by the project using funds allocated for such purposes.

Email your policy suggestions to RCC