ASU Research Computing Acceptable Use Policy

The purpose of ASU Research Computing (RC) and the resources it oversees is to further the scientific, research, and educational efforts of ASU and its partners. ASU RC staff may modify or cancel any activity that interferes with this purpose to support the University's research efforts.

By using the ASU RC systems and resources, you agree to the following Acceptable Use Policy (AUP):

1. University Policies

1.1 All users of ASU RC resources are responsible for following Arizona State University’s “Computer, Internet, and Electronic Communications Information Management Policy” (ACD125) and any specific Departmental, College, or School requirements related to computing, information security, and electronics. 

2. Communications

2.1 To maintain communication with the principal investigators, sponsors, and users of the systems, users' ASURITE emails are added to our email notifications for outages and maintenance messages. Any accounts that choose to unsubscribe from outages and maintenance messages those accounts will be locked, and any accounts sponsored under that account until the account is re-enrolled in our mailing list.

3. University Use Only

3.1 ASU RC resources are reserved explicitly for scientists, researchers, and other staff to further research and scholarly advancement by ASU and its associated institutions and partners. Any use of the supercomputer for personal or commercial gain is strictly prohibited.

4. Maintenance

4.1 ASU RC aims to perform network, server, storage, and supercomputer maintenance during regularly scheduled maintenance windows as RC's governance board approves.  ASU RC will take necessary corrective actions outside these designated windows in unexpected or urgent situations.

5. Restricted Data Sets

5.1 ASU RC systems covered by this AUP comply with ASU Data Handling Standards Level 1 and 2. Should your research data contain CUI (Controlled Unclassified Information), ECI (Export controlled information), HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act), FERPA (Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act), PII (Personally Identifiable Information), PHI (Protected Health Information), or any other regulated data, Level 3 or 4 may be most compliant. Please consult with ASU RC staff before using any ASU RC systems to verify compliance.

6. Licensing

6.1 Some software offered on ASU RC systems is controlled by individual license agreements. It is the responsibility of the user to obtain and maintain proper licensing of any user installed software.

7. Cryptocurrencies, cryptographic mining, distributed cryptography

7.1 Mining operations involving cryptocurrencies (such as Bitcoin), distributed cryptography projects (such as distributed.net), and all forms of volunteer computing (such as SETI@Home) are prohibited on ASU RC systems unless the user obtains specific prior ASU RC written consent.

8. Project and Long Term Storage

8.1 ASU RC reserves the right to create, modify, and enforce quotas on all user directories, including long term storage (Canyon) and project data directories (/data). ASU RC personnel may delete, move, or make user files unavailable as necessary. 

8.2 Long term storage is not directly accessible by most systems; instead, users must move the data to other storage accessible to the system for processing.

Data Protection Against Loss and Corruption

Individual users and projects are responsible for protecting their data from loss and corruption. While ASU RC makes every effort to maintain the availability and integrity of our storage products, ASU RC does not guarantee that data will not be lost or corrupted. Project storage has hardware redundancy to protect against hardware failure and 14 days of changes captured in snapshots to protect against human errors. There is no copy of the data to another system. Long term storage does not have hardware redundancy, snapshots, or replication.

9. Co-located hardware

9.1 ASU RC provides co-location (colo) services to equipment compatible with RC's infrastructure and suitable for RC’s security posture. ASU RC only supports equipment used for research or academic purposes. 

9.2 The customer recognizes that ASU RC and ASU bear the expense of providing rack space with power and cooling. ASU RC will prepare the space, including networking, and install the equipment. ASU RC may remove equipment if it becomes a security issue or inoperative to maintain an adequate security posture and reduce power, cooling, and associated services costs.

9.3 ASU RC will install ASU RC standard Operating Systems (OS). However, the customer is responsible for any license costs. The customer is responsible for the maintenance and licensing of the server and all software, including the OS, installed on those systems.

9.4 The customer is responsible for compliance with the KE Security Policy and OS patches so that all parts of the systems meet ASU, KE, and ASU RC security standards. 

9.5 The customer is expected to keep the equipment under a vendor warranty or 3rd party maintenance agreement.  ASU RC will assist in maintenance and repairs while under warranty or an acceptable maintenance contract.   ASU RC will not be responsible for any repairs or maintenance to equipment that is out of warranty.

9.6 Access to each space may have different requirements. Where ASU RC staff is required to escort users, accommodations may need to be coordinated with ASU RC to work within the standard work week of M- F, 8 am - 5 pm.

9.7 Fees for paid services are due annually. ASU RC can have additional service fees prorated to align all service fees' due dates. Failure to remit fees promptly, even if notification requests experience delays, may result in loss of access. Refusing payments for extended periods may result in forfeiture of those services until resolved.

Data Protection Against Loss and Corruption

Individual users and projects are responsible for protecting their data from loss and corruption. While ASU RC makes every effort to maintain the availability and integrity of our products, ASU RC does not guarantee that data will not be lost or corrupted. Data includes the hardware's OS, software, configurations, and storage drives. ASU RC does not provide data loss protection methods for co-location services, such as hardware redundancy, snapshots, or replication.

10. Virtual Systems

10.1 ASU RC will install ASU RC standard Operating Systems (OS). However, the customer is responsible for any license costs. The customer is responsible for the maintenance and licensing of the server and all software, including the OS, installed on those systems.

10.3 The customer is responsible for compliance with the KE Security Policy and OS patches so that all parts of the systems meet ASU, KE, and ASU RC security standards. 

10.4 Fees for paid services are due annually. ASU RC can have additional service fees prorated to align all service fees' due dates. Failure to remit fees promptly, even if notification requests experience delays, may result in loss of access. Refusing payments for extended periods may result in forfeiture of those services until resolved.

Data Protection Against Loss and Corruption

Individual users and projects are responsible for protecting their data from loss and corruption. While ASU RC makes every effort to maintain the availability and integrity of our products, ASU RC does not guarantee that data will not be lost or corrupted, including the virtual machines' OS, software, configurations, and data storage. ASU RC captures periodic snapshots of the whole system to assist in a quicker recovery should a system failure occur. These are not always usable for recovery.

11. Supercomputers

ASU RC reserves the right to create, modify, and enforce quotas on all user directories, including home directories (/home) and temporary directories (/scratch). ASU RC personnel may delete, move, or make user files unavailable as necessary.

11.1 Access

Access to ASU supercomputers is available to ASU faculty, staff, students, and affiliates. Faculty members, principal investigators, and designated staff may act as sponsors, subject to the discretion of RC. Applicants not eligible to be a sponsor must obtain a sponsor to qualify for access.

11.1.1 Course Allocations

Instructors can request supercomputer allocations for their courses, which include temporary accounts for students and a shared /data directory for the course. By making this request, instructors agree to the AUP on behalf of their students and are responsible for ensuring that students understand and adhere to the AUP. Upon course completion, ASU RC will archive the class account and /data directory, and students will have limited access to Research Computing's systems. ASU RC will not affect student accounts with other sponsors within Research Computing. Instructors must communicate these expectations to students and important updates that may impact their coursework, such as planned maintenance, outages, or scratch migration. 

11.2 Jobs 

Violating any of the following could impact your ability to use the service. Severe or repeated occurrences will result in ASU RC Staff locking the user’s account. Further consideration could remove your access privileges altogether.

11.2.1 Users should run jobs on the supercomputer compute nodes configured for this purpose. Running jobs on the supercomputer’s login nodes is prohibited and will generate a warning. ASU RC Staff may terminate the user's job without advance notice

11.2.2 Any jobs or processes that impact the performance or load functions of other users running their jobs will result in ASU RC Staff terminating the user's job without advance notice

11.2.3 Jobs on the supercomputer resulting in excessive resource idleness, such as idle interactive sessions for four or more hours or “sleep loops,” will result in ASU RC Staff terminating the user's job without advance notice

11.2.4 Unattended listening services (jobs that create listening ports for other computers to connect to) will result in ASU RC Staff terminating the user's job without advance notice

11.3 Scratch File System Use

The scratch filesystem on the supercomputer is a temporary, shared storage resource for temporary files and computational results that are too IO (input-output) intensive for home directories. This space is available to all supercomputer users. Users must actively use files stored on ASU RC arrays on the supercomputers, and users must remove them within 90 days of inactivity or upon request of ASU RC staff. 

11.3.1 Active Use is defined as access or modification within the last 90 days or designation as a source dataset used for reference in jobs on the supercomputer. After the system generates and sends notifications to active owners, ASU RC may remove files older than 90 days. The responsibility for using data from another user's directory falls to the sponsor to move data from deactivated users' home directories if needed. The scratch space provides short term storage for immediate use during computational jobs. Each user is responsible for limiting their use of scratch storage to minimize the impact on other users. 

11.3.2 To ensure the best system stability and performance, the scratch directory has a limit per user. ASU RC will also enforce a limitation of 20 million files per user. ASU RC may temporarily expand this limit to accommodate specific research needs. ASU RC Leadership will consider requests for consultation for additional scratch space.

11.4 Home directories are limited to 100GB. Due to their size, the intended use is for software installations and package environments (e.g., Python environments). As a result, home directories are considered persistent storage and do not undergo purging, unlike the temporary scratch filesystem.

Data Protection Against Loss and Corruption

Individual users and projects are responsible for protecting their data from loss and corruption. While ASU RC makes every effort to maintain the availability and integrity of our products, ASU RC does not guarantee that data will not be lost or corrupted. ASU RC does not provide any protection methods for the scratch space, such as hardware redundancy, snapshots, or replication. Home directories have hardware redundancy to protect against hardware failure and 14 days of changes captured in snapshots to protect against human errors and corruption. There is no copy of the data to another system.

12. Violations of this Acceptable Use Policy, ACD125, or other University Policies

12.1 Violations of the policies of Arizona State University and/or ASU RC may, at the discretion of ASU RC, entail temporarily locking or permanently removing accounts associated with ASU RC, including accounts that allow access to the supercomputers, servers, and ASU RC storage systems.

13. Updates to ASU RC Policies

13.1 ASU RC may, at the discretion of ASU RC Management, amend, modify, and otherwise edit ASU RC's policies as needed and publish those changes to the ASU RC website.