Terms of use

You can refere to the HPC glossary for HPC vocabulary.

General

HPC clusters are intended for academic and/or research use only.
It is required to have some basic knowledge of the Linux command line (without GUI) and Bash scripting.

Each project/research publication that used UNIGE HPC clusters must include the following statement and a link has to be sent to hpc(at)unige.ch:

"The computations were performed at University of Geneva using Baobab HPC service."

First Step (11 Months of Inactivity): After a user has been inactive for 11 months (meaning they haven't connected to any of the clusters), they will be warned about the impending deletion of their account, along with all their associated data.
Second Step (1 Month After First Warning): If, after receiving the initial warning, the user still hasn't successfully connected to any of the clusters one month later, both the user and their Primary Investigator (PI) will be notified. This notification likely serves as a final warning and an opportunity for the user to take action or inform their PI.
Last Step (If No Action is Taken): If, after the second notification, the user still hasn't logged in, and there has been no request from the PI to keep the account active, the user's account and all related data will be permanently deleted.

The purpose of HPC clusters login nodes is to access the clusters only.
It is forbidden to run heavy compute jobs on the login nodes, you must use a compute node instead.

It is forbidden to store personal data on the HPC storage.
The HPC clusters aren't a long term storage provider: users are requested to manage their files on a regular basis: delete uneeded files, migrate results or valuable data to a permanent location such as Tape NASAC or Yareta.

Home directory is backed up. There is no waranty that the backup is done each day.
Users have a quota of 1TB on the `$HOME` directory.
The quota can be extended on reasoned request. Depending on the requested quota the increase can be granted on a temporary basis only.

Scratch directory is not backed up.
Each user has a 'scratch' directory with no quota on the filesize. There is however a quota on the number of files, 1Mio files.
Any file that has not been used (read or write) in the last three months is marked as erasable and can be deleted by systems engineers with 48 hours notice.

Read our documentation before contacting us for help: support - get help:
Each issue must be posted, firstly, on the forum in the category `HPC support > HPC issue` using the pre-defined template.
Each new feature request must be posted in `HPC support > HPC Whish List`.
For private request (example: add user in specific group), you can directly contact the hpc team.

Each user is added to the low traffic mailing list 'Baobab announce'.
For any important informations, incidents, events, the HPC team will communicate on the HPC-community forum and send an email to 'Baobab announce' mailing list.

First Occurrence: If a user violates the terms of use or the best practices for HPC, he will be contacted by email or phone by the HPC team. The purpose is to understand, resolve, and prevent the violation from happening again.
Second Occurrence: If the same user commits a second violation, he will receive an email notification about the transgression. A copy of this notification will also be sent to the Primary Investigator (PI).
Third Occurrence: In the event of a third violation, the HPC system engineers may take various actions, including suspending the user's access to the clusters, suspending job submissions, terminating processes or jobs, and deleting data. This list of actions is not exhaustive, which means additional measures may be taken as deemed necessary.

Any transgression of these terms of use, or the the use of digital resources, may lead to a suspension.