How to get access to SD Services: Project manager
Use case
You need to access to SD services for processing research data. You are manager of research team or work independently.
Solution
- Create a CSC account
- Create new CSC project
- Data protection
- Activate SD Services for your project
- Apply resources (billing units) for your project
- Activate MFA Authentication
- If you have a research team, add them to be your project members
- Closing your project and data retention
- Log into SD Services
Note
The default lifetime of a CSC project is one year. All data stored in SD Connect or SD Desktop, including files, virtual desktops and volumes, will be permanently deleted 90 days after the project closure/ expiration.
Step by step tutorial
1. Create a CSC account
- Go to MyCSC portal
- Log in with Virtu or Haka depending on which federation your home organization is a member of. Select your home organization and log in to their identity service. How to get an account without Haka or Virtu.
- Fill in your information on the Sign up page.
- Set your password using 12 characters or more, containing both upper and lowercase letters and at least one number. No special characters are allowed.
- You will receive your CSC user account confirmation via email.
2. Create new CSC project
- Go to ”Projects” page (left side menu or a hamburger menu at the top right corner).
- On the top of the page choose ”New project”
- Fill in the project name and project description. You can edit these later if needed.
- Choose the Project category to be “Academic” (if you are a researcher and a member of Finnish higher education institution)
- If your project involves handling personal data, choose "Yes" for the field: We handle personal data in this project.
- Next, under Terms of Use, ensure you meet the Prerequisites and Responsibilities to be a CSC Project Manager. For research projects, the Project Manager should be an experienced researcher (e.g., postdoc, group leader, professor, or doctoral researcher employed by a research organization). Note for Students: If you are a student, please have your supervisor create the CSC project or contact CSC Service Desk (subject: sensitive data) for assistance. It is not possible to access SD Services with a student account.
- Finally, read and accept the terms of use.
- Click Create new project.
3. Data protection
3.1 Description of Processing Activity (GDPR) form
When you first access your project, you’ll be prompted to complete the Description of Processing Activity (GDPR) form if your project handles personal data. This form requires key details such as the types of data collected (e.g. sensitive personal data), how it is used and secured, and the data controller (usually your home organization). The form will be linked to your CSC project and guide CSC in managing the data. You can edit the document later if needed.
3.1 Data Transfer Outside the EEA
When transferring personal or sensitive data outside the EEA, ensure you have the appropriate legal basis and comply with relevant data protection legislation. Be mindful of this when sharing sensitive data with collaborators via SD Connect or SD Desktop.
3.2 Contact your organization’s legal office
If you need assistance with the above points or support to verify if SD service are suitable for processing your research data, contact your organization's data protection officer or legal service. You can provide them with supporting documents such as:
- Technical and Organizational Measures (TOMS)
- Service descriptions of SD Connectand SD Desktop
- The CSC Data Processing Agreement (DPA)
- The GDPR form (Description of processing activity ) that can be downloaded from your CSC project
- The CSC Data Policy
4. Activate SD Services for your project
- Services are added through Services window in the bottom right of the project page. Click "Add services".
- Select SD Connect and read and accept the terms of use (Allas will be added automatically as it is the underlying storage solution).
- Select SD Desktop and read and accept the terms of use.
- Click Add selected services.
5. Apply billing units for your project
The Billing Unit (BU) is CSC’s metric for tracking resource consumption for each CSC projects. As each service consumes billing units. When starting a project, consider your resource needs, including storage and billing units consumption. Each project starts with 10,000 billing units, typically enough for initial testing.
You should estimate how many BU’s your project will consume during 1 year and apply more if needed. When you start a new project, you should plan ahead for your project's billing unit and storage usage.
- See the table below for estimating your billing unit consumption.
- Apply more billing units for your CSC project by clicking "Apply for resources" in Resources window.
- You will get more info after your application to your MyCSC inbox.
- You can always ask help from Service Desk Subject: SD Services
What happens if your project runs out of billing units?
Once all the billing units for your CSC project have been used up, access to the SD Desktop service will be restricted. This means that:
- all virtual desktops currently running will automatically be paused
- you will not be able to access the virtual desktops content's or unpause them, until you have applied for more resources
- your data remains unaffected and will not be deleted, even in cases where the total billing units reach zero or enter negative values.
Note
Each project member will receive a notification via email from the My CSC portal when the billing units for your CSC project are about to end.
SD Connect BU consumption
SD Connect stores data to Allas. Default storage space for SD Connect/Allas is 10 TB, which you can expand up to 200 TB as needed. If you need even more storage capacity, please contact service desk (subject: Increase Allas quota). Storing data in SD Connect/Allas consumes billing units at a rate of 1 billing unit per TB per hour. This means that storing 1 TB of data in SD Connect/Allas consumes 24 billing units daily and 8760 billing units annually.
Here’s a table summarizing the billing units required for storing data in SD Connect over 6 months and 1 year for various storage sizes:
| Storage Size | Billing Units (6 Months) | Billing Units (1 Year) |
|---|---|---|
| 500 GB (0.5 TB) | 2,160 units | 4,320 units |
| 1 TB | 4,320 units | 8,640 units |
| 10 TB | 43,200 units | 86,400 units |
| 100 TB | 432,000 units | 864,000 units |
SD Desktop BU consumption
Analysing data in SD Desktop consumes billing units based on the type of virtual desktop used. Each virtual desktop can also have a volume (also called disk space), where files can be imported from SD Connect/SD Apply. The volume can be added only during desktop creation (up to 200 GB). If you need larger volume please contact service desk (subject: Sensitive data).
Here’s a table summarizing the billing units required for using SD desktop over 6 months and 1 year for various desktop options:
| Desktop Option | Billing Rate (units/hour) | Billing Units (6 Months) | Billing Units (1 Year) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Small Computation | 5.2 | 22,464 | 44,928 |
| Medium Computation | 10.4 | 44,928 | 89,856 |
| Heavy Computation | 52 | 224,640 | 449,280 |
| Small GPU Computation | 120 | 518,400 | 1,036,800 |
| Big Picture project | 159 | 696,467 | 1,392,934 |
6. Activate MFA Authentication
- You need to activate MFA (multi-factor authentication) to be able to log in the Sensitive Data services. More about multi-factor authentication.
- Before activating MFA you need to have some authentication application in your mobile, for example Google Authenticator or Microsoft Authenticator.
- Click Enable MFA in Project notifications window in top right corner or go to the Profile page (Left side menu or top right hamburger menu).
- Enable Multi-Factor Authentication by clicking Activate.
- This will create a QR code which you can read with your authentication application (for example Google Authenticator).
- You authentication application will provide a verification code which you can now write to MyCSC Verification code field and click Verify.
7. If you have a research team, add them to be your project members
- Go to project page and select the correct project (Left side menu or hamburger menu).
- Add members from Members window. Click Add members.
- In the new window you can search and add members from your own organization.
- If you need to add members from other organizations you can create a invitation link by clicking Invitation link.
- Generate link and use it in email or webpage.
- People can apply a membership for your project by clicking the invite link.
- After that you have to approve them to be member of your project in MyCSC through Members window in Membership applications tab.
Note
Each CSC project members must also create a MyCSC user account (this happens when they apply membership to your project), activate the MFA and approve the terms of use of the services you have activated (SD Connect, SD Desktop).
8. Closing your project and data retention
The default lifetime of a CSC project is one year, after which it will be automatically closed and all data deleted. As a project manager, you can either extend the project duration or directly close your project after completing your research. As a project manager you should familiarize yourself how to close CSC project via the MyCSC portal.
- You will receive an email notification from the MyCSC portal when your project is about to expire. Please keep your contact information up to date in MyCSC to ensure you receive this notification.
- After the project is closed, access to SD Connect and SD Desktop services will be disabled.
- All data stored in SD Connect or SD Desktop, including files, virtual desktops, and volumes, will be permanently deleted 90 days after the project closure/ expiration.
Note
Once data is deleted in line with CSC's data retention policy, it cannot be restored or recovered.
9. Log into SD Services
- Now all the preparations are already and you can start to use SD Connect and SD Desktop.