Terms and Conditions

All use of Research Computing Platforms is subject to the general UCL Computing Regulations.

The following terms also apply to the use of ARC HPC services, including:

• Myriad
• Kathleen
• Michael
• MMM Young
• ARC Cluster Filesystem ("ACFS").

They do not apply to other ARC services, including:

• Data Safe Haven
• Research Data Storage Service

These services have their own terms and conditions for use.

Commercial Services

It is not permitted to provide commercial services from your account on our systems.

Impairing Other Users

On nodes intended for shared use to access a service ("login nodes"), we run a system intended to restrict the load any single user can produce.

We may also terminate running processes, or remove running or queued jobs, if they impair the availability of shared resources for other users.

Access Suspension

If you:

• are subject to a UCL disciplinary procedure,
• or breach UCL's Computing Regulations,
• or are suspected to have shared your access credentials,
• or are suspected to be involved in a security incident,

we may raise this with relevant UCL teams¹ and suspend your access to services until any relevant processes have been completed.

Your Data

Our research computing services have data storage capabilities, but should not be treated as the sole repository for your data. We do not make contractual agreements about uptime or availability.

Outages and data-loss events will be handled on a best-efforts basis within normal UCL working hours.

Transferring Data Ownership

You may contact us to arrange to transfer ownership of your data on a service to another user, with their consent. Please arrange this before you stop being a user, as requesting the data of a user who has left or cannot respond is significantly more complicated.

• Requesting transfer of your data to another user
• Requesting data belonging to a user who has left

Data in a shared space is considered to belong to the owner of the shared space, and the listed ownership of that data may be reset at the owner's request.

• Requesting a shared space ownership reset

Outside these listed requests, we will not honour requests from users to obtain access to, or operate on, data owned by other users. This includes requests by supervisors of students, and requests by supervisors of former students.

Data Access by Support Staff

We will not access your data without your consent, except in the following circumstances:

• You contact us with a support issue and the data is relevant to your request.
• We have reason to believe the data is relevant to investigating an on-going security incident.
• In automated service processes, such as backups, or transfers between storage systems for service maintenance.

Occasionally support requests can involve more involved work, including running jobs as a user. Since this can be disruptive or involve changes to files and directories, in this case we will check with you when it is safe to begin the work, and when the work has ended.

Data Retention

Data Retention on Leaving UCL

We intend to retain user data for 180 days after a user has either left UCL, requested that their account be removed, had their institution request that their account be removed, or become ineligible for an account in some other way.

This process is not currently automated, so data may still be retained after this time. Please contact us if you need to ensure your data has been erased.

Backup Retention

• On clusters where home directories are backed up, backups are retained for 15 days.
• On the ACFS, backups are retained for 30 days minimum.

Filesystem Retirement

When filesystems or clusters are retired, they will be decommissioned and we will not retain the data left on them. Barring unforeseen circumstances, you will receive three months' notice before this happens.

Autonomous & Agentic AI Tools

On our clusters, we have not yet decided whether to allow the use of non-deterministic automated systems that incorporate e.g. Large-Language Models into the control flow.

However, in the meanwhile, the following applies:

• You are fully responsible and accountable for the results of any actions taken by an automated system you use.
• This includes actions that breach security boundaries, actions that disrupt or impair the operation of systems, actions that harm other users, and actions that delete or modify data.

Acknowledgement in Works

We request that you acknowledge the use of our HPC services in any publications describing research that has used them, in any part. The following words should be used:

"The authors acknowledge the use of the UCL Myriad High Performance Computing Facility (Myriad@UCL), and associated support services, in the completion of this work".

Or analogous terminology for other services.

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1. I.e. the Information Security Group, or Human Resources. ↩