Administrative

Policies

Table of Contents

BSBC Policies
Access Policies
General Usage Policies
Password Policies
Security Policies
Maintenance Policies
Usage Fee Policies

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BSBC Policies

Policies for the BSBC high performance compute cluster have been adopted to govern access, resource allocation, security and maintenance of the cluster. The BSBC Steering Committee will evaluate policies on a regular basis to ensure continued high availablity of resources and services.

Access Policies

1. Access to the BSBC high-performance compute (HPC) cluster will be made available to the academic and scientific community (including BioTech/BioPharmaceutical companies) in the Piedmont Triad area (Greensboro, Winston-Salem and High Point) whose biotechnology research requires high-performance parallel computing.
2. All requests for access to BSBC cluster resources will be reviewed by the BSBC Steering Committee for approval. This includes user accounts, job submission queues, BSBC mailing list, and physical access to the cluster.
3. Limited or temporary access to the BSBC cluster may be granted to individuals or groups as deemed appropriate by the BSBC Steering Committee.
4. Resource allocation will be determined based on group or individual’s role on the cluster.
5. Access to cluster PBS scheduling queues will be determined by group membership.

General Usage Policies

1. Inactive accounts will be removed six months after the account password has expired.
2. External access to the BSBC cluster is limited to secure shell (SSH) login.
3. PBS (torque) queues will be created to govern access to resources on the BSBC cluster.
4. All jobs on the BSBC cluster must be submitted via the batch queuing system (PBS).
5. Users may be assigned to one or more user groups based on the user’s role on the cluster.
6. Users may be granted permission to use one or more PBS queues based on group memberships.
7. Effective permissions for users associated with multiple groups will default to the least restrictive group permissions.
8. Only BSBC administrators and account holders are allowed to be added to the BSBC mailing list.
9. Current account holders are placed on the BSBC mailing list automatically at the time of account creation and removed when the account is closed.

Password Policies

1. E-mailing of passwords is prohibited.
2. Initial passwords will be randomly generated.
3. Passwords must be at least 10 characters in length.
4. Passwords must contain a mixture of upper and lower case.
5. Passwords must contain at least one symbol.
6. Passwords must contain at least one number.
7. Passwords must not be shared.

Security Policies

1. Login information (user names or passwords) should never be shared with others.
2. Passwords must follow the guidelines as described in the password policies.
3. All e-mail addresses will be loaded on webpages as images to prevent email harvesting – color may be applied to the image, but no functionality will be associated with the image.

Maintenance Policies

1. Users listed on the BSBC mailing list will be notified by e-mail of scheduled maintenance downtimes for the BSBC cluster.
2. Cluster downtime may vary depending on pending maintenance issues.
3. Unscheduled downtime may occur due to unforseen problems. All attempts will be made to contact users when problems arise.

Usage Fee Policies

1. A 4-tier access fee schedule will be used for assessing BSBC usage fees based on user type: Commercial, Principal Investigator Types 1 and 2, or Basic plans. Please refer to the BSBC Facility for complete details regarding usage fees.