Terms of Service

The CAC’s Resources and Services

• All researchers in member institutions and across Canada, including postdoctoral associates, graduate students, undergraduate students (if doing research), research associates, and research staff are eligible to apply for accounts on the CAC’s systems.
• For a default account for the Frontenac Cluster, institutional credentials are required.
• The CAC acknowledges that high-quality research projects often require large resource allocations and encourages researchers to tackle problems that require as much computing as can be delivered. Nevertheless, the CAC’s resources must be shared equitably. The CAC seeks to balance the two goals fairly.
• Normally, all users have equal access to the CAC’s resources. Users who need and can use all of CAC’s computing resources on a large-scale problem are encouraged to contact us to arrange for additional resources through our intake process. 
• The CAC exercises no control over the content of the information passing through the CAC’s equipment. The CAC makes no warranties of any kind for the service it provides.
• The CAC will not be responsible for any damage a user, or any other person, suffers in connection with the use of the CAC’s facilities. This includes damage resulting due to delays or service interruptions.
• The AC staff make every effort to prevent loss of data in the event of hardware or software failure, or through human error. In rare cases, it may not be possible to restore data files from backups, and some may be lost. The CAC will not be liable to any person for any loss or corruption of any data, records or information placed on the system. Users agree to indemnify and save the CAC harmless from all liability.
• Each user agrees to indemnify and hold harmless the CAC from any claims resulting from the user’s use of the service.
• The CAC will maintain an up-to-date registry of all the CAC’s compute resources, licensed software, and the location of those resources.
• Each user agrees to indemnify and hold harmless CAC from any claims resulting from the user’s use of the service.
• In the event that the CAC has actual knowledge, or there are reasonable grounds to believe, that the user may be in violation of any of the restrictions under CAC policies, the CAC shall have the unrestricted right to terminate or suspend the user’s rights under this policy.
• The CAC reserves the right to refuse extra computing resources to users if their code cannot use the extra resources efficiently. Users are encouraged to attempt problems that require large resources, but the onus is on the user to ensure that their code can use the resources efficiently.
• All resources are shared. Users are subject to a default allocation (see wiki pages for details) on the Frontenac cluster. This allocation is a target, i.e., contingent on availability.
• The default usage of our resources is through a queuing system. The scheduler implements resource allocations, priorities, fair-sharing policies etc. System usage outside of the scheduler requires specific permission.
• The CAC can maintain regular backups for the purpose of disaster recovery. We do not provide archiving services for default accounts.
• If an account is deactivated, the CAC archives or retains the data for a grace period. Temporary data (for instance “scratch”) are not preserved and may be deleted at any time. Past this period, if no action was taken to reactivate the account, we reserve the right to permanently delete the data. 
• Security issues and related services are addressed in the Security Policy.