Core Facility in Advanced Research Computing

Usage Policies for

Research Virtual Machine (RVM) Service

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The Core Facility in Advanced Research Computing (CFARC) provides services in several areas to support the research mission of the university.

In the area of general-purpose computing resources, CFARC provides and operates an on-premise Research Virtual Machine (RVM) service designed to provide researchers with virtual machines (VMs) for non-mission-critical research purposes such as application hosting. This service is not intended to replace established CFARC services such as high performance computing, Hadoop, and research data storage that are designed for activities that are particularly compute or data intensive.  CFARC provides the RVM service at a subsidized cost to support the research mission of CWRU. Each service request must be sponsored by a CWRU faculty member who will be added to various CFARC mailing lists, will be the contact person related to their research group’s use of the CFARC RVM service, and will be responsible for that use.

All policies will be reviewed periodically by CFARC management in consultation with the Advisory Committee on Research Computing (ACRC) and users of the service. Changes to policies and service features will be made as needed, with changes communicated to faculty sponsors via email. The most current policies will always be made available online on the CFARC web site.

Subscriptions to the RVM service

All usage of the CFARC RVM service is provided through subscriptions to VMs. Each subscription is made for a one year period and may be renewed for additional one-year periods. A subscription provides the defined set of resources for the VM, the ability for the user to remotely administer and reset the VM, and documentation on how to carry out these VM administration tasks.  Administration of the operating system installed in the VM and support of applications run in the VM are not included in the subscription. VMs of the following types are available:

As shown in the table above, VM types are defined by resources assigned to the VM configuration.  These resources are described as follows:

vCPU: A vCPU is a “virtual central processing unit” or “virtual CPU”. Each vCPU is similar to a CPU core within one of the physical processors in the infrastructure that underlies the RVM service.  A physical processor may run one or more virtual processors from one or more customers.

RAM: RAM, or random access memory, is the high-speed, volatile (not persistent) memory that is present in most computers, from PCs to supercomputers.

Persistent block storage: Persistent block storage is online disk storage whose content is maintained even when a VM is not active.  It corresponds directly to physical disk storage within the RVM service’s underlying infrastructure. Persistent block storage that is assigned to a particular VM is private to that VM and is not accessible from any other VM. Additional persistent block storage in 1 GB increments may be added to a subscription at any time. No RVM resources may be reduced until a subscription expires.

Getting a subscription

CWRU faculty members may request RVM subscriptions using the iLab core facility billing system adopted by CWRU. Each faculty member is entitled to one rvm.large VM type subscription at no cost. Beyond this no-cost VM, the faculty member may acquire additional RVM subscriptions per the current standard fee schedule available in iLab. Only faculty members may submit applications for RVM subscriptions.  The faculty member will be added to various CFARC mailing lists, will be the contact person related to the research group’s use of the service, and will be responsible for use.

In addition to the application process given above, in some situations faculty members may be asked to sign an additional agreement for specific project(s), detailing the unique requirements and/or specialized system support needed for the provisioned VM. Support activities such as operating system administration and application support are not included in the subscription. Please contact CFARC if you have additional requirements outside the scope of the subscription service.

Using a subscription

The faculty subscriber controls use of the RVM subscription and provisioned VM. The faculty subscriber may delegate this capability to manage the subscription and provisioned VM to one or more designated graduate students, research staff members, postdocs, or visiting scholars. The faculty subscriber and the faculty subscriber’s delegates:

• must maintain a contact list with CFARC, consisting of technical and fiscal personnel contact information,
• have responsibility for the proper licensing of all software, including the operating systems installed on the provisioned VMs, except where this is expressly arranged otherwise with CFARC because of host operating system licensing terms,
• have responsibility for managing operating systems and other software in the  provisioned VM, including patching, upgrades, configuration, firewalls, network addressing and management,
• have responsibility for installing any host management tools as required by CFARC,
• have responsibility for all security scans, intrusion detection, log inspection, and other forms of system integrity tracking, performance monitoring, and troubleshooting for the  provisioned VM,
• have responsibility for compliance with all applicable CWRU security, privacy, IT, and other policies and procedures, and with applicable state and federal laws and regulations,
• have responsibility for timely patching of  provisioned VMs with vendor-supplied fixes of security vulnerabilities for both applications and operating systems,
• provide user access to provisioned VMs, for example to the faculty member’s designated graduate students, research staff, postdocs, and visiting scholars,
• set user permissions (root, local admin) for provisioned VMs, and
• make requests for access to RVM management tools provided by CFARC.

Renewing and modifying a subscription

When a subscription is acquired it is assigned an expiration date.  At the expiration date the faculty subscriber may let the subscription expire or may, prior to the expiration date, renew the subscription with the same RVM type or with modifications. If the subscription is let to expire, CFARC will, upon request, assist the faculty subscriber in retrieving data from the VM’s persistent storage for storage elsewhere.  If modifications to the subscription are made, the faculty subscriber is responsible for ensuring that all underlying VM applications are configured correctly to operate in the modified VM environment.

At any time prior to the expiration of a subscription, the faculty subscriber may elect to extend the subscription for one or more years beyond the original expiration date. At any time prior to the expiration of a subscription, the faculty subscriber may elect to upgrade a VM to a predefined type with more underlying resources (e.g. from rvm.small to rvm.medium) or may elect to increase the amount of persistent storage associated with the VM. The fee increase for the new VM type or additional persistent storage will be prorated to the remainder of the subscription.

Using other storage with the RVM service

In addition to RVM persistent block storage, it is possible to use other storage services in connection with the RVM service.  This includes UTech standard research storage and UTech research dedicated storage services as well as storage in the UTech Box service. Please contact CFARC for more information on using these storage services in connection with the RVM service.

Alternate subscription mechanisms

Faculty may elect to establish subscriptions through hardware and software contribution to the RVM infrastructure rather than through the payment of fees. Such a contribution would consist of VM infrastructure hardware with maintenance in effect for five years, along with required software licenses. The contribution forms the basis for the faculty member’s subscription by establishing a VM resource pool from which the faculty member’s VMs would draw their resources. After five years, continued use of the hardware is at the discretion of CFARC. In addition to hardware, software licenses must be purchased for each node contributed to the RVM infrastructure and software maintenance must be maintained throughout the lifetime of the hardware.

Other policies

Software

In general, faculty subscribers are responsible for licensing, installing, and maintaining all software installed in their VMs.  This includes operating systems and applications. CFARC will initially maintain a small set of templates for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 and Microsoft Windows Server 2016, that can be used by faculty subscribers to provision their VMs with an operating system. Other vendor supported Linux-based operating systems may be installed by individual faculty subscribers in their VM instances. Although CFARC does not provide services for management or support of operating systems, UTech provides such services at an additional cost.

Physical access

Faculty members will not be granted physical access to the hardware supporting their provisioned VMs.

Managing VMs, operating systems, and applications

CFARC is not responsible for, and has no obligation to assist in the installation, configuration, management, or support of guest operating systems or software applications. CFARC will provide best-effort advice and guidance in those areas.  

Backup, data protection, and data recovery

CFARC does not provide backup of provisioned VMs as part of the RVM subscription service. If those services are desired, UTech can provide them at an additional cost.

Acceptable use

VM guest operating systems are limited, in general, to Linux-based and Microsoft Windows-based, server-class operating systems. Exceptions may be made for other types of operating systems, but CFARC has final discretion. Generally, all operating systems that have mainstream vendor support can be supported. Only in critical-need scenarios will CFARC support the installation of a guest OS that is past its vendor-published end of life. CFARC has the right to add additional information security controls on a VM including the use of firewall rules to limit the risk of malicious activity. RVM has been designed to support up to “internal use” information types. CFARC will maintain a list of operating systems that are officially supported by the supplier of the underlying virtualization software. Although not required, CFARC recommends that the guest OS be chosen from this list when possible to maintain eligibility for vendor support.

Due to the multi-tenant nature of the RVM service, CFARC must maintain the optimal performance of the service for the tenant community as a whole. Therefore CFARC retains the right to intervene in the operation of individual VMs, up to and including shutting down a VM down that is materially affecting the ability of the service to function properly.

Use of the RVM service is limited to CWRU research only. No commercial use is permitted. All use of the RVM service is governed by the CWRU Acceptable Use Policy at https://case.edu/utech/departments/information-security/policies/i-1-acceptable-use-of-information-technology-policy-aup.  Determination of acceptable use will be made by CFARC management. CFARC will not permit the use of software in the RVM service that does not meet the CWRU Acceptable Use Policy and other applicable university policies.

University IT Policies

Users of the RVM service will adhere to all University IT related policies at https://case.edu/utech/departments/information-security/policies.

These include policies related to identity management, network usage, and categorizing and protecting university data. The RVM service has been designed to support up to “internal use” information types. Please contact UTech for further clarification or assistance with categorizing and protecting university data.

Schedule of Fees for Research Virtual Machine Service

(Effective 1 July 2018)

All fees for RVM subscriptions must be paid using a CWRU speedtype. All billing for the RVM service is done through CWRU’s iLab core billing system. Within the iLab system, a user selects one or more of the available RVM types as listed in the following table.

Available RVM types

Persistent block storage

Persistent block storage is online disk storage for files that is maintained even when a VM is not active and directly corresponds to physical disk storage within the RVM service’s underlying infrastructure. Persistent block storage that is part of a VM subscription is associated only with that particular VM and is not accessible from any other VM. Persistent block storage beyond the amount included in the defined RVM type is priced as follows:

Using other storage

In addition to RVM persistent block storage, it is possible to use other storage services in connection with the RVM service.  This includes UTech standard research storage and UTech research dedicated storage services as well as storage in the UTech Box service. Please contact CFARC for pricing associated with these storage services in connection with the RVM service.

Alternate subscription pricing

The price of RVM infrastructure and required software licenses to establish an RVM subscription through alternate means is determined by vendors and may change over time.  The minimum one-time investment for alternate subscription pricing is approximately $45,000 (approximately $25,000 for hardware and approximately $20,000 for one-time software licensing) with approximately $3500 in annual software fees over the five-year lifetime of the hardware, so this option is only attractive to those with very large VM requirements. Faculty who are interested in this option should contact CFARC directly.

RVM in the Context of Server Centralization

Server centralization is one part of the initiative to centralize IT at CWRU. To facilitate server centralization in cases where services, rather than physical servers, are relocated to a UTech data center, the RVM service may be used to host those services. When VM subscriptions are provided to faculty in lieu of physical servers in the context of server centralization, they are provided at no cost, will expire on June 30, 2023, and follow the same policies outlined in the RVM policy document.  At or prior to expiration, faculty members can elect to renew a no-cost subscription at pricing and terms that are in effect at the time of renewal.

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