JASMIN support is provided by two distinct teams:

  1. The CEDA team provide direct support to users of the Managed Infrastructure.
  2. The JASMIN team provide support to:
    • System administrators in the Managed Infrastructure.
    • Tenancy administrators in the Unmanaged Infrastructure.

All users of JASMIN support, whichever category, should seek support via the CEDA Helpdesk.

Support will be provided during normal working hours, defined as between 0900 and 1700 on Monday to Thursday and between 0900 and 1630 on Friday, excluding Public Holidays and STFC Privilege Days. Note that times are given in UK time.

The CEDA and JASMIN teams together undertake to:

  1. Attempt to provide an initial response to all support queries within one working day.
    • When responding to support queries, the JASMIN Team will take reasonable steps to ensure that the information we provide is accurate and useful, but we can't guarantee this. You are responsible for your use of any advice or information we may give you.
  2. Be proactive in communicating important service updates and issues to users via the JASMIN news channels and JASMIN mailing lists. Advance warning of known service interruptions will be made where possible.
    • Users are encouraged to sign up to these services to remain abreast of these news announcements.
  3. Maintain online help documentation to aid users to find answers to common queries ahead of contacting support@jasmin.ac.uk for further assistance.
    • Online documentation is a “best efforts” activity. Users are encouraged to provide positive suggestions which will improve documentation.

The scope of support provided differs depending on which part of the JASMIN infrastructure the query relates to.

Managed Infrastructure

This is the Platform-as-a-Service offering, which includes the shared Login and Scientific Analysis machines, the LOTUS batch cluster, project-specific VMs and Managed Cloud tenancies. Users will not usually have root access, except for VM Administrator access as detailed in the Terms and Conditions of Access.
  1. Support queries are accepted for all aspects of running software on JASMIN. However, it should be understood that the CEDA and JASMIN teams may not have enough knowledge of the software in question to resolve all queries.

Unmanaged Infrastructure

This is the Infrastructure-as-a-Service offering, otherwise known as the Unmanaged Cloud. A self-service portal is provided for users to provision their own VMs, on which they get root access.

Support queries are subject to the following constraints:

  1. Support queries are only accepted from a tenancy administrator, not from end users of any of the tenant’s services.
  2. Support is only provided for the cloud infrastructure - no support is provided for software on VMs, including the OS, system libraries, installed packages and bespoke software deployments.
  3. Support is limited to those aspects of cloud infrastructure functionality and configuration which are available in the JASMIN Cloud Portal and covered in the JASMIN Cloud documentation.
  4. For tenancies that were created prior to the existence of the JASMIN Cloud Portal, where administration access is via the vCloud Director interface, support is limited to the same level of functionality as provided by the JASMIN Cloud Portal. In particular:
    • Machines must be deployed from the CentOS 6 or Ubuntu 14.04 templates created by the JASMIN Team. Deploying from custom images is not supported.
    • Outbound NAT must be IP-­masqueraded (i.e. all machines in a tenancy appear to the outside as a single IP address).
    • Inbound NAT rules must be set with a one-to-one mapping between public IP and internal IP.
    • The public IP address used for outbound NAT IP-masquerading should not be used in inbound NAT rules.
    • The edge device firewall is initially closed to inbound traffic and tenants are responsible for setting rules to enable external connectivity where required.
    • No support will be provided if the JASMIN Team deems that fundamental tenancy configuration has been modified outside of the scope of the baseline provided.