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Hyak Terms of Service

All users of the RCC/STF resources on Hyak must agree to the RCC Hyak terms of service. You can read the full TOS below. Please agree to the TOS by reading the entire document.

Eligibility

UW-Seattle students who pay the student technology fee (STF) for the current quarter are eligible to use RCC Hyak resources. This includes undergraduate and graduate students. Non-Seattle students are not currently eligible for general membership but can get access for one quarter as part of a goodwill exemption policy (see below). Students must join Research Computing Club before accessing Hyak. Access will be maintained over the summer quarter for students who have not graduated. Postdocs, faculty, staff, or other UW affiliated people are not eligible.

Students who experience short-term lapses in eligibility (e.g., going on leave for a quarter) should contact RCC leadership to make arrangements to preserve their files and access during their absence.

Goodwill exemption: Students visiting UW who are currently enrolled at another university are eligible for one quarter of RCC Hyak access. To request access, contact a member of the RCC leadership team on slack or through email.

Appropriate Use

RCC Hyak resources are intended to be used for academic, personal, and professional advancement by students. These resources should not be used for commercial work. In general, Hyak should be used for class-related assignments, academic research, and personal learning projects. Hyak cannot be used to perform commercial services for pay (ex: paid consulting/contracting work for a startup).

In compliance with UW use of equipment policies (https://finance.uw.edu/eio/equipment-lifecycle/proper-use-equipment/personal-use-equipment), the RCC account on Hyak may not be used for:

  • Conducting an outside business; supporting, promoting, or soliciting for an outside organization or group unless otherwise provided by law;

  • Political campaigning.

  • Commercial purposes such as advertising or selling.

  • Illegal activities.

Some activities may fall into a gray area between personal development and commercial use. To help make a distinction, consider that UW can make claims on intellectual property generated with UW resources. If you don’t want to share the IP for what you are building with UW, don’t build it with Hyak. Use for commercially-sponsored UW programs such as capstone projects is considered appropriate. Absolutely no crypto mining. Don’t even ask.

Getting Access to Hyak

The full procedure for gaining access to the Hyak STF account is posted at [Getting Access]. This procedure involves:

  • Establishing eligibility, as described in the eligibility section

  • Reading the Hyak documentation in full

  • Demonstrating proficiency in basic shell usage required to interact with Hyak

  • Agreeing to the terms of service (this page)

Storage Usage

Storage on Hyak is provided for direct usage by jobs running on Hyak. This storage should be temporary and should not be considered ‘safe’ in any way. RCC users may use the storage space available at /mmfs1/gscratch/stf.

All STF users must comply with storage use limits described below. By using STF resources on Hyak, users understand that all storage provided at /mmfs1/gscratch/stf is to be used for temporary storage of job-related files and that RCC or UW-IT makes no guarantee of storage availability. Users understand that any files in excess of the published posted limits will be deleted without notice. Files associated with users who are no longer eligible to use Hyak may be deleted without notice. RCC or UW-IT are not responsible for the loss of files stored in /mmfs1/gscratch/stf for any reason. It is the responsibility of users to back up their files.

Storage usage limits

RCC has put in place resource quotas to limit the impact of individual high-use users on the usability of the account for others. These limits apply to both disk quota (total file size in GB) and inodes (number of files). These limits may be enforced with a hard quota or manual file deletion by RCC administrators. Users may not be notified before enforcement action is taken. Users who need a temporary exception to the posted storage quotas can request an exemption by contacting the RCC leadership team via email or slack.

  • Total disk usage file size limit: 1,500 GB

  • Inode (File number) limit: 500,000

Community Contributions

The resources provided by RCC are only available due to the contributions of dedicated student volunteers. RCC seeks to foster a culture of community contributions to ensure the sustainability of these resources. All Hyak users are strongly encouraged to consider making community contributions. Heavy users of RCC resources may be asked to make meaningful contributions to the sustainability of RCC.

Examples of community contributions include:

  • Writing a tutorial module to add to the documentation for a piece of software or other tool that you use in your work

  • Hold an RCC officer position

  • Host an in-person training on a topic relevant to Hyak usage

  • Participate in an RCC outreach event

Acknowledging Hyak and Reporting Publications

We expect you to acknowledge the use of RCC Hyak resources used in the completion of any published work that involves the use of these resources, just as you would acknowledge funding from a grant or other resource. Please also report your publications to RCC leadership. These acknowledgements help RCC show the impact of the resources we provide to people who determine future funding, so they are critical to sustaining the resources RCC provides.

This acknowledgement should include the use of Hyak and funding from the UW student technology fee (STF). The phrase "Funded by the Student Technology Fee" and/or the STF logo must appear on web pages, social media posts, and any other materials advertising or referencing your project.

An example acknowledgement is:

  • “[Parts of] This work was/were completed on Hyak, UW’s high performance computing cluster. This resource was funded by the UW student technology fee.”

Please report publications when asked to on user review surveys. Failure to acknowledge Hyak usage or report publications may result in loss of access to the RCC Hyak resource. Note that publishing work completed on Hyak is not a requirement, but reporting your published work is. If you have unpublished work completed on Hyak, we would still love to hear about it!