Terms and conditions

Usage rules

Access to the MetaCentrum grid computing infrastructure is free of charge for members of academic and non-commercial Czech research institutions with research or educational objectives. If you are interested in using our infrastructure for partial commercial research purposes, please get in touch with us in advance to discuss whether your research project can be conducted at MetaCentrum. Please note that the use of MetaCentrum for purely commercial activities is strictly prohibited, and computing resources cannot be provided for a fee. Foreign colleagues and collaborators who are not affiliated with a Czech research institution can also use the MetaCentrum computing capacity, but only by prior arrangement.

MetaCentrum services are available on a ”best effort” basis. The operator strives to maintain the availability and security of the service, with essential services running in high-availability mode and automatically monitored. We understand that you may have questions or encounter issues, and we want you to know that our support team is here to help during the standard working hours.

For a complete description of the service, please refer to the MetaCentrum NGI pages, where you can also find the full terms of use.

Account prolongation

User accounts expire annually on February 2nd. Users are notified via email by the end of December/beginning of January to request account renewal and fill out a short summary. To renew your account, follow the instructions provided in the email and submit the required information by the specified deadline.

If the account is not renewed by February 2nd, it will expire and become hidden and inaccessible. However, the data and login details will still exist and can be reactivated by submitting a renewal application. After a three-year grace period, expired accounts are deleted permanently without notification, along with all associated data.

Expired accounts can be renewed at any time during the year here. To renew your account, please visit this page and follow the instructions.

Acknowledgements and publications

All publications created with the support of MetaCentrum, CERIT-SC and/or Elixir CZ must include the following acknowledgement formula. Please fill in citations of your publications in our system. This is not just a formality, but a way how to demonstrate the benefit of MetaCentrum for the local research community. User publications with acknowledgements are reported to the provider of subsidies that ensure further development of the infrastructure. As an added bonus, you will receive privileged access to all the resources of the MetaCentrum, CERIT-SC and ELIXIR CZ based on the fairshare system.

Research group annual report

We ask research groups to send us their annual reports for the previous year by the end of January. The report should include:

1. The name of the group.
2. Contact address.
3. A list of the group members.
4. A summary of the group’s research interests.
5. Hardware contributed to Metacentrum (if applicable).
6. Most frequently used Metacentrum software.
7. New software developed (if applicable).
8. A list of research projects that used Metacentrum resources, together with a brief description.
9. A list of publications with acknowledgement to Metacentrum/CERIT-SC.

Accepted languages are English and Czech. The report can be in any file format. Please send the report to annual-report@metacentrum.cz.

Security

The secure and effective utilisation of MetaCentrum resources is only possible if specific operational rules are adhered to. Study the brief security rules for working in MetaCentrum and on the network very carefully.

1. Users must protect their account with a strong Kerberos password. This password must not be shared. It must not be used with open (non-encrypted) protocols, such as standard, non-Kerberised Telnet or FTP.

2. A non-trivial password cannot be deduced from data known about the account owner (even after simple mutations), and is not the name of a person, animal or object (even after simple mutations). Administrators are authorised to perform tests to check for non-trivial passwords. In the event of a positive result, they will inform the account owner securely. The account owner must then change the password immediately (the account may be locked until the password has been changed).

3. Users are not permitted to share their accounts, usernames and passwords.

4. If the password is compromised, it must be changed as soon as possible – see How to change your password.

5. The use of non-secured protocols such as Telnet and FTP on other machines is also not recommended. If this authentication method is used, the lower security level of the specific account must be taken into account (including the possibility of password disclosure during network transmission). Using such an account to log in to MetaCentrum via the Kerberos or SSH protocols is forbidden due to the risk of a security breach involving a weakly secured account, followed by the use of fake SSH or fake Kerberos with a Trojan horse, and consequently the risk of a breach of MetaCentrum accounts.

6. Any strange behaviour of your account, such as the appearance or disappearance of files, or unknown processes running under your identity, must be reported to the MetaCentrum administrators.

7. Users are solely responsible for setting the necessary access rules to control access to their data. Please note that users’ home directories are readable by all MetaCentrum users by default. To prevent other users from accessing your home directory, you must modify its access rights.