Introduction

The National Supercomputing Mission envisages empowering our national academic and R&D institutions spread over the country by installing a vast supercomputing grid comprising of more than 70 high-performance computing facilities.

NSM extends access to PARAM UTKARSH commissioned at C-DAC, Bangalore to MSMEs & Startups India.

All users of PARAM UTKARSH must abide by the following policies.

Computing system use

Use of PARAM UTKARSH ( PU ) computing resources should be used only for work directly related to the purpose for which resources were requested and granted. Use of PU resources for personal activities is prohibited.

The PU Team maintains up-to-date documentation on its computational resources and their proper use and provides regular training and constant support to users.

The frontend ( access ) nodes of PU cluster are reserved for data transfer to/from the cluster, preparation of job submissions to the queueing system and checking the status computational jobs. The frontend nodes must not be used for compute or I/O bound processes. Processes inappropriate to execute on the access nodes may be killed and user notified.

The PU computing resources are shared by a wide user base and are managed by the queueing system ( Slurm workload manager), which schedules and allocates these resources primarily based on a fair-share mechanism. Large scale experiments involving either large individual jobs or many smaller jobs launched in rapid succession must be done with the guidance and prior approval of PU Team. Users should provide job walltimes appropriate to the requirements of the computational tasks executed, allowing the workload manager to generate optimal job schedules.

Users must comply with resource limits as defined in the queueing system and/or communicated by the PU Team. If possible, you should plan large scale experiments during off-load periods ( night-time or week-ends).

Users are prohibited from running applications for personal gain on PU resources such as applications that mine cryptocurrency.

Users repeatedly violating these policies may denied access to PU.

Software use

PU system provides on its cluster a rich user software environment with both domain-specific codes and general purpose development tools.

Users can bring their own software and use them on PU resources provided that all software has been appropriately acquired and is used according to their corresponding software license agreements. Users are not allowed to access software license belonging to other groups without explicit approval from the group PI.

Users must not intentionally introduce or use malicious softwares on PU HPC facility, including but not limited to viruses, worms, ransomware, etc.

Data use

Use of PU HPC data storage resources (file systems, backup, etc.) should be used only for work directly related to the projects for which the resources were requested and granted. Use of PU HPC data resources for personal activities is prohibited.

Authors/generators/owners of information or data are responsible for its correct categorization as sensitive or non-sensitive. Owners of sensitive information are responsible for its secure handling, transmission, processing, storage, and disposal on the PU HPC systems. The PU HPC Team recommends use of encryption to protect the data from unauthorized access.

Users are prohibited from intentionally accessing, modifying or deleting data they do not own or have not been granted explicit permission to access.

Users are responsible to ensure the appropriate level of protection, backup and integrity checks on their critical data and applications. It is their responsibility to set appropriate access controls for the data they bring, process and generate on PU HPC facilities.

In the event of system failure or malicious actions, PU HPC makes no guarantee against loss of data or that user or project data can be recovered nor that it cannot be accessed, changed, or deleted by another individual.

User and PI responsibilities

Users are accountable for their actions. Misuse of PU HPC resources or noncompliance with the Acceptable Use Policy can lead to temporary or permanent disabling of accounts, and administrative or legal actions.

● Industry partners as commercial users of HPC resources are granted PU HPC User Accounts for the duration of the contract established.
● Users are only allowed one account per person.
● Sharing of user credentials (including but not limited to the User Account password, Private keys and their passphrases) is strictly prohibited.
● Users are provided with a strong password for their Account when it is created. When changing this password, users must choose a strong password that should be unique to their PU HPC User Account.
● Users should inform the HPC Team promptly of any changes in their contact information (email, affiliation, etc.).

● Mention the PU HPC facility in an acknowledgment section of a publication:

Acknowledgement

 The experiments presented in this paper were carried out using the PU HPC facility of the National Supercomputing Mission project.

Personal information agreement

C-DAC’s Petascale Supercomputing Facility ( CPSF ) retains the right to monitor all activities on its facilities.

Users acknowledge that data regarding their activity on PU HPC facilities will be collected. The data is collected (e.g. by the Slurm workload manager) for utilization accounting and reporting purposes, and for the purpose of understanding typical patterns of user’s behavior on the system in order to further improve the services provided by PU HPC. Another goal is to identify intrusions, misuse, security incidents or illegal actions in order to protect PU HPC users and facilities.

Users agree that this data may be processed to extract information contributing to the above stated purposes.

Users agree that their name, surname, email address, affiliation, work place and phone numbers are processed by the PU HPC Team in order to provide HPC and associated services.

Warranty disclaimer

PU HPC facilities are provided to users without any warranty or commitment to a particular service level. CPSF accepts no responsibility for the performance of its services, nor for the correctness or completeness of any outputs and results obtained while using its facilities.