Policy

K-State Information Technology Usage Policy

As Beocat is a K-State resource, the following usage policy also applies: http://www.k-state.edu/policies/ppm/3420.html

Please pay close attention to .050-2, and .050-4, as these are egregious violations.

Maintenance

Beocat reserves the right to a 12 hour maintenance period every other week on Monday from noon to midnight. However, this maintenance is not always necessary. Maintenance intentions and reservations will always be announced on the mailing list 2 weeks before an actual maintenance period is in effect.

Head node computational tasks

The head node serves as a shell server and development environment for Beocat users. We wish to keep this machine running responsively to make work easier. We do not have a problem with running simple post-processing work on the head node directly. But, if your process seems too computation or memory intensive, it may have its priority severely reduced or may be killed completely. If in doubt, ask.

Due to abuses of the head node, there are now strict limits in place. If a process uses more than 4GB of RSS memory or 6GB of virtual memory, it will get killed automatically. RSS Memory is limited to 12GB across all users. CPU Usage is allocated with a fair-share algorithm, all users have equivalent access to CPU time.

Backups

For those of you using our hosted virtual machines, no backups of said machines or data are made.

We attempt to provide nightly backups of normal Beocat home directories with a 3 month history. This is not a guarantee of recovery.

For the best chance of good backups and proper recovery:

• Limit the number of files in your home directory. If you have more than ~1 million files, the backup probably won't be able to complete each night.
• Limit your total home directory size. If you have more than 4TB of data, the full backup will take more than 1 day to complete.

Account deactivation

If your account has not been used for 2 years, we will mark the account for archival, and remove your ability to login. If you should need the account again, please fill out our account request form.