Fornax User Agreement v.1.0 Nov. 24, 2025

The Fornax Team is excited to welcome you to the Fornax Science Console. Please be aware that as a Fornax user you will receive the following resources and need to obey the following guidelines:

1. NASA will provide you with a certain amount of cloud resource “credits” that can be spent on compute, storage, and egress. (See Fornax User Resource Allotments and Costs for Open Beta).

2. To help you keep track of your cloud resources and spending on them, there are “dashboards” in the Fornax Science Console.

3. In the cloud, every second that compute, storage, or egress is in use will cost credits. This is substantially different from traditional on-premises hardware costs:

   1. You pay credits for storage every second from the moment it is allocated to you.

      1. If you are allocated 20 GB of storage when you log in, you are charged credits for 20 GB every second thereafter, even if you are only storing 1 GB of data.

      2. You continue to pay credits for storage as long as it is allocated to you; if the cost of 20 GB of storage is 2 credits/month, you pay that every month you own that storage

      3. If you request additional storage, the cost for that comes out of your total allotted credits.

   2. The second you start a compute instance (e.g., 2 CPUs with 8 GB RAM), you are paying credits for compute, whether you are running a notebook in JupyterHub, or not. For more info, see Shut Down Your Server in the Fornax Quick Start Guide.

   3. Larger compute instances cost more than smaller ones. Cost goes up with the number of CPUs and the amount of RAM, with the smallest instance costing a hundredth of the largest one.

      1. We strongly recommend you use the smallest instance for development and debugging of your code; save the larger instances for when you are sure there are no errors and are ready to run at scale.

4. If you run out of credits, your access to compute will be severely curtailed, and your storage space may be compacted and archived, until you receive more credits.

   1. Please plan your use accordingly. Remember, egressing data costs credits - factor that into your estimates.

   2. You will receive warning messages when you start to get low on credits (at approximately 20% of your starting amount)

   3. Currently, credits are awarded on a yearly basis. If you expend your initial credits before that year is up, you can apply for more by opening a Topic in the Support area of the Fornax Community Forum.

5. The Fornax Science Console is for scientific research and education only. Anyone found using it for other purposes may have their account instantly revoked.

6. Please behave professionally when interacting with other users and Fornax staff.

7. Failure to follow these guidelines may result in termination of your Fornax account.

8. If you have questions:

   1. For users who don’t have a Fornax Account, send e-mail to: fornax-helpdesk@lists.nasa.gov

   2. For users who have a Fornax Account: post in the "Support” section of the Fornax Community Forum