PI's Free Quota Policy
Each financial year, a charge concession of HKD 5,000 is granted to every eligible academic supervisor (Principal Investigator, or PI) at PolyU to offset service payments for the University Research Facility in Big Data Analytics (UBDA). This quota is non-transferable, cannot be accumulated or carried forward across financial year, and may only be used by the PI’s designated research team members in UBDA services' payment.
To claim and activate the waiver, the PI may contract RIO to have the quota injected into their PI account within the University Research and Facility Management System (URFMS). RIO will then create a waiver-linked payment source, which the PI can assign to eligible research members such as students and project staff for their use in UBDA service charges. The annual free quota is automatically issued at the start of each financial year and expires at its end. The upcoming quota period will be valid from 1 Jul 2025 to 30 Jun 2026.
Please note that students, project staff, and guests are not entitled to receive the HKD 5,000 wavier independently, instead they should seek funding support from their academic supervisor, who can allocated payment sources either from the waiver-linked quota or from real project-linked funding via URFMS. Additionally, the PI or their delegate may settle computing resource charges for their research team members through URFMS. In such cases, a remark in the optional note field upon payment submission should be added for proper documentation and reference.
URF's Free Access for newly appointed APs and RAPs (1st year)
As part of a RIO initiative effective from 1 November 2023, all newly appointed Assistant Professors (APs) and Research Assistant Professors (RAPs) at PolyU are eligible for one-year free access to all centrally managed research equipment operated by the University Research Facilities (URFs) at PolyU.
If the Principal Investigator (PI) is an eligible AP or RAP under this initiative, they should contact RIO and submit the relevant documentation to claims a full waiver. Upon approval, RIO will then create a special payment source within the University Research and Facility Management System (URFMS) for their research-related usage accordingly. Please note that claims for waived access cannot be made retrospectively after the Financial Office (FO) has settled the payment from project accounts. All matters related to payment and wavier claim processing are handled by RIO and FO - not by the UBDA.
UDBA Service Access and Subscription Plan
UBDA is one of the Central Facilities at PolyU that provides computational resources, including GPU cards and cloud storage, to all eligible users. To initiate UBDA services, please follows the steps below:
Step 1: New User Registration
All new users must complete and submit the registration form prior to service activation: New User Registration
Step 2: Service Subscription via URFMS
There are currently two subscription plans available for users of UBDA. To access UBDA’s computational resources, users should actively enroll in one of these plans. Delays in subscription may result to service interruptions or potential data loss. Therefore, users are strongly encouraged to choose a plan that aligns with their specific research needs and budget, and to schedule their subscription accordingly.
- Basic Plan
Fee: HKD 1,500 per quarter
Users can enjoy all services provided by Inspur-2018 cluster, including HDD storage, HPC service*, non-GPU Private Cloud Service, Jupyterlab Online Service*
*GPU cards' model are NVidia Tesla P100 16GB
- Advanced Plan
Fee: HKD 6,000 per quarter
Users can enjoy all services provided by Inspur-2018 cluster and Lovelace-2024 cluster, including HDD and NVMe SDD storage and GPU-enabled virtual machine (GVM)** provided by Lovelace-2024 cluster
**GPU cards' model are NVidia RTX6000 Ada/ L40S/ RTX4090
The minimum commitment of both is one quarter, and no additional fees will be incurred beyond the chosen plan. All subscriptions are non-refundable.
Subscription coverage is structured around fixed quarterly periods:
Q1: 1 January – 31 March
Q2: 1 April – 30 June
Q3: 1 July – 30 September
Q4: 1 October – 31 December
For example, a payment made on 25 October will apply to the 4th quarter and the subscription will expire on 31 December. Certainly, users may choose to pay for one or multiple quarters in advance. In such cases, it is advisable to specify the intended coverage period in an optional note upon the time of payment. All service payment has to be transacted exclusively in the University Research and Facility Management System (URFMS).
Step 3: Account Creation and Confirmation
UBDA will review the application after receiving the new user account registration. A notification email will be sent to user’s PolyU email address once the account has been setup (typically takes 3-5 business days).
PI's Free Rackmount Servers and GPU-cards Hosting Policy
The Rackmount Servers and GPU-cards Hosting Services are offered free of charge with the exception of the mandatory "Deep Security License", which is charged by ITS at HKD.500 per year per host server. UBDA will handle all administrative, system-monitor and maintenance duties on half the project owner and their parent department, ensuring reliable and secure hosting.
The service is part of a broader initiative led by the VP(RI) office to better leverage University human resources in supporting high-performance computing infrastructure. Where needed, UBDA can offer assistance in drafting tender specifications that align with requirements of the PolyU ITS Data Center (P404) and UBDA's network interface standard. Price quotations from vendors can also be facilitated upon request.
All hosted servers will be installed at the ITS Data Center P404, and integrated into UBDA’s network, including security and firewall protections.
For further information or to request hosting arrangement, please contact with our scientific officer Dillian Wong (dillian.wong@polyu.edu.hk)
