Terms & Conditions

Access to the Supercomputing Wales systems is subject to the following Terms & Conditions. If you do not accept them, you must not use the systems.

Usage must be in compliance with your host institution’s Acceptable Use Policy and the JANET Acceptable Use Policy.

All data stored on the Supercomputing Wales systems is at the owner’s own risk. The owner is also responsible for ensuring that collection and use of their research/project data are in compliance with data protection regulations

Unless explicitly advised, backups will not be taken of data by Supercomputing Wales. You are advised to maintain your own backups of important or not easily recreated data.

Supercomputing Wales accepts no liability for any loss of data.

Any user found breaching acceptable use will have their accounts immediately suspended and will be reported to their host institution and be subject to the appropriate disciplinary action.

Any software used on the cluster is under the correct licensing conditions. If a user presents a license for software to be installed on the Supercomputing Wales systems they are confirming that they have the original software suppliers consent for it to be installed on a 3rd party system.

Unauthorised access to commercial software will result in access being immediately suspended pending further investigation.

Data Protection

The Privacy Notice detailing Data Protection factors on the Supercomputing Wales services, is available on the below link:

Supercomputing Wales_privacy notice_FINAL

Password policy

We require users to follow good password management practice as described in their institutions policies.

Passwords are set to a certain standard:

  1. At least one uppercase letter
  2. At least one lowercase letter
  3. At least one number digit
  4. Password length is at least 8 characters

If a number of attempts to login to the systems fail, then this may trigger automatic banning from your computer for 24 hours.

Password changes to the systems can be performed via the mySCW interface.

Best Practice

Please also see our page on Conduct & Best Practice.

Inactivity

Users and projects that are inactive (no logins and/or no compute activity) for more than 12 months may be disabled as a security measure. Reactivation is easily achieved through contacting the Support Desk.

Mailing lists

During account creation, users of the “Hawk” supercomputer are automatically subscribed to arcca-community@cardiff.ac.uk. You will receive:

  • Important announcements and updates about the service.
  • Invitations to training events.

If you would like to unsubscribe from our mailing list, please contact arcca-help@cardiff.ac.uk.