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Acceptable Use

Acceptable Use

The Acceptable Use Policy (‘this policy’) is to ensure the fairness and efficiency of CCB HPC (‘the facility’) operated by its administrators (‘facility administrators’). It applies to all users (‘users’) of the facility, including ‘end users’ who are given access credentials, and ‘principal investigators’ who oversee the cost and usage.

All users must follow all applicable IT Rules and Regulations:

Communications

  • Users must send all their reports and requests to the facility administrators at help@imm.ox.ac.uk.
  • Users must keep the facility administrators updated their registered email addresses.

Documentation and Training

  • End users should refer to the official documentation at https://lumin.imm.ox.ac.uk.
  • Parts of the facility may be reserved to users who have undertaken appropriate training courses.

Computing Resource

  • End users must only access the facility through the login nodes and the interactive nodes. The login nodes are designated for
    • Submission, monitoring, and maintenance of jobs,
    • Establishing connections to the interactive nodes,
    • File management, including transfer of data into or out of the facility.
  • End users must ensure that their job scheduler requests are minimal to complete jobs with reasonable parallelism. Facility administrators may cancel excessive requests at any point.
  • End users must notify the facility administrators in office hours (9am to 4pm, Monday to Friday, except holidays of WIMM) should they need to extend jobs.
  • End users should avoid submitting interactive jobs, but if desired, they must only request running to the partitions with maximum job time no more than 24 hours.
  • End users should understand their batch jobs may give way to others due to fair share algorithms.
  • End users should apply checkpointing and pipelining techniques for jobs with fluctuating usage.

Data Management

  • Users must only place data classified as ‘public’ in the datashare directories.
  • Users must make backup copies of crucial research data outside this facility.
  • End users should use symbolic or hard links instead of copying large static files.
  • End users should use scratch drives instead of making intensive random access on shared drives.

Networking

  • End users must keep no more than 8 concurrent processes/threads downloading from the Internet.
  • End users must keep the downloaded content if reuse is necessary.
  • End users must configure their programs, if required, listen to the TCP/UDP ports equal to their own user IDs only. The IDs are between 20000 and 30000, and can be found by the id command.
  • End users must only use SSH for tunnelling, and to the TCP/UDP ports opened by themselves only.

Account Maintenance by Principal Investigators

  • An accounting period runs from 1st August until the following 31st July. Renewal invoices are sent on 1st August. Principal investigators must settle these invoices timely.
  • Principal investigators must inform the facility administrators any discrepancies or changes, especially when team members depart, and before the renewal invoices are sent.
  • Principal investigators must handover ownership of projects and the end user accounts to other Oxford members before the university affiliations cease.
  • Facility administrators may reassign or delete data if the principal investigators have not paid or cannot be contacted through the registered email addresses.

Account Maintenance by End Users

  • End users must plan role changes (including supplicate leaves, graduations, contract changes) that lead to termination of university affiliations and thus closure of their user accounts on the facility.
  • End users must make copy of the necessary data before their end user accounts close.
  • Facility administrators can only reinstate end user accounts that has regained affiliations.
  • Facility administrators may reassign or delete any data owned by any closed user accounts.

Personal Interactions

  • The facility is a shared environment where users must treat others with respect and good manners.
  • Any conflicts or issues should be raised to the facility administrators with the stipulated method.
  • The decisions of the Head of IT and Research Computing at WIMM are final.

Security

  • End users must report any security incidents or suspicious activities to the facility administrators.

Software License

  • Users must only use software they are licensed to use.

Enforcement

  • Failure to comply with this policy may result in termination of computer tasks, suspension/termination of access, and/or deletion of data. It may also result in other disciplinary actions in according the prevalent university policies.

Refunds

  • The facility is unable to refund for unused user accounts or project space quotas.
  • Unused perpetual (but not ‘fixed’) end user account can be transferred to another affiliated person.
  • Unused project space quota can be transferred to another project space.

Copyright

  • The text of this policy is copyright of the University of Oxford; it may not be reproduced or redistributed without permission.

Author

  • Kinson Chan, 3 Sept 2025

 

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