Advanced Computing Research Centre

Policy

For full details of the University's computing policy, please refer to the Code of Conduct for the Use of Computing Facilities and the Data Protection Guidance.

In particular you must never allow anyone else to use your account or give your password or identifier to anyone else. In both cases, this will lead to your account being closed.

New Applications

Once a new application has been submitted, the request will be reviewed by the academic members of the HPC Executive, and a decision made, hopefully within a week.

Costs

The machine currently operates under a fair share policy and no charge is made for general access. However HPC costs can be included in grants if you require guaranteed access, have a large request for resources or wish to purchase additional equipment for the facility. Details of how to do this are now included in the fEC costing tool and costs are available here.

Back up

We cannot guarantee that data stored on the system is resilient as it is not backed up. We would therefore advise you to ensure that important data is adequately backed up.

Confidential data

BlueCrystal is a multi-user system and as such there is risk that data, unless properly protected, can be seen by other users of the system. We recommend that you seek our advice if you wish to learn how to create a private area for your data.

Problem jobs

If a job is causing problems, e.g. dangling processors, causing nodes to fail or crash etc., we will kill such jobs without notice.

Acknowledging ACRC in Publications

When you write articles about your research for publication, conference proceedings or for other reasons, please acknowledge use of the ACRC facilities by including the following:

This work was carried out using the computational facilities of the Advanced Computing Research Centre, University of Bristol - http://www.bris.ac.uk/acrc/.

Publications

Use of the ACRC facilities constitutes agreement to provide the ACRC with details of any publications concerning research conducted using ACRC facilities. We ask that you do this by linking any publications that you enter into Pure, where an element of the research was undertaken using BlueCrystal, to the HPC facility which is detailed in Pure under Equipment. (From the Research Output screen, go to the Relations section, select Equipment and enter HPC.) Future funding for the ACRC facilities is dependent on our being able to demonstrate the number and range of publications being produced through use of BlueCrystal .

Postgrads who do not yet have a Pure personal user account can apply via this link - http://www.bristol.ac.uk/red/research-policy/pure/support/accessform-pg.html.

Renewal of User Accounts

User accounts will only be valid for one year, and you will be requested to renew your account annually every March.

Users from outside University of Bristol

If a researcher from another university is part of a joint project with a member of staff from the University of Bristol, they may apply to join a project as an external user. The account will have to be renewed annually, in line with accounts for users from the University of Bristol.

If you leave the University

We must be able, if necessary, to contact a user and so accounts will only remain open while we have a valid email address for that user. If you leave the University and wish your account to remain open for a period to finish some research, or access your data, you must supply us with a new email address.

If you leave the University, you must advise us whether you wish to retain any of your data held on BlueCrystal before you leave. In the absence of any contact, the data may be deleted.