When Access Starts & Ends | Datahub & PARASOL Documentation

Access to Datahub and PARASOL (formerly DSMLP) is granted through a workspace rather than to an individual, and the date it opens depends on the kind of workspace (What a Workspace Is and What It Controls). After a course ends, access ends first, the course environment is purged on a later date, and instructor and course-wide files are archived only on request.

Students Enrolled in a Course¶

Student access follows the course roster in TSS (formerly TritonLink). No request or form is required. An environment appears for every student enrolled in a course that uses the platform.

Datahub sign-in uses standard UCSD single sign-on. See Signing In. ssh to the login node takes the Active Directory username instead. See Connecting over SSH.

Roster Loading and Changes¶

Rosters are loaded into workspaces one business day before the start of the term. A TSS change, such as an add, a drop, or a section change, is reflected in Datahub and PARASOL by 10am the day following the change. Report anything still missing after that time to parasol@ucsd.edu.

Waitlisted students are enrolled along with the rest of the roster. The instructor can re-add a student removed from a waitlist as an observer.

Auditors, Observers, and Concurrent Enrollment¶

Auditors and observers are not on the TSS roster. The instructor or TA adds them through Canvas. Obtain the instructor's permission before requesting access as an auditor.

Concurrent Enrollment students receive access through Extended Studies staff.

Late Course Requests¶

Late course requests are lower priority and are reviewed as time permits. Students in a course that was requested late may not gain access until as late as 4th week.

Instructors, TAs & Course Staff¶

Course Timeline sets out the deadline for course requests and the date course setup and instructor access open.

Each course receives a shared nbgrader grader account. Formgrader works only with that account, and instructor and TA accounts cannot be used for it. Grader Account describes the account.

Adding TAs and Course Staff¶

The instructor adds TAs through Canvas. Departmental staff, co-instructors, and anyone else who is not a UC San Diego student cannot be added through Canvas. To have them added to the roster, email parasol@ucsd.edu or follow up in the course's Service Desk ticket.

Personal Accounts for Instructors¶

An instructor who needs access to evaluate the platform, or to develop a course that does not yet exist, requests a personal account through the ITS Service Desk instead of waiting for a course to be provisioned.

Independent Study, Capstones & Special Projects¶

For-credit independent study and research (for example, 199/299), thesis-related research, and certain departmentally sponsored student projects are requested through the Independent Study Request form. The form asks about the project, its resource requirements, and its sponsorship. Setting up access takes up to 5 business days from the request. Non-instructional activities such as clubs and personal projects may be approved case by case, as resources allow.

The Independent Study Request form is for individuals. Access for a course is requested separately, through the Specialized Instructional Computing Course Request form. See Course Timeline.

Eligibility Limits¶

Population	Eligibility through this route
Self-supporting programs, such as MBA, MAS, and Extension	Eligible under the terms in Self-Supporting Programs
Health Sciences departments, such as Medicine, Pharmacy, and Neurosciences	Datahub access may be limited by Health Sciences security restrictions. PARASOL access is unaffected.
Non-student researchers, including postdoctoral scholars	Not eligible. Contact Research IT Services.

Priority of Student Research Jobs¶

Student research jobs run at a lower priority than coursework. Contention is expected during 8th-10th week and finals.

Research Labs & Individual Researchers¶

Research IT Services curates lab and research workspaces manually, with the potential to auto-populate from departmental staff affiliation. Research workspaces have no roster feed and no fixed calendar. A research workspace opens when it is provisioned, and its membership changes on request.

Research IT handles platform selection. Support for research work and for Universal Scale Storage is through rcd-support@ucsd.edu.

Service Units for New Members¶

A new member of a workspace receives the full Service Unit (SU) budget for the current week. The budget is not prorated for a member added late. See The Size of a Budget.

Reporting Missing Access¶

Most reports of missing access concern a roster change that has not yet reached the time in Roster Loading and Changes. A report made after that time names the course code, the system in use (Datahub or dsmlp-login), and whether the person is enrolled, auditing, or on an independent study request.

One Additional Quarter¶

Instructors and students retain access for one additional quarter beyond the instructional term, ignoring Summer for Spring courses. For a Spring course, the additional quarter is Fall.

Course taught in	Access retained through	Access ends (current cycle)
Fall 2026	Winter 2027	20 March 2027
Winter 2027	Spring 2027	19 June 2027
Spring 2027	Fall 2027 (Summer is not counted)	18 December 2027

The course's shared grader account and TA access to the course environment follow the same schedule.

Extending Access for an Individual¶

An extension applies to an individual account, not to the course environment. The workspace keeps its own schedule, and the extension continues the account's access to it.

Instructor Requests¶

An instructor may request that individual accounts stay active longer. The established reasons are Incomplete grade resolution, academic integrity proceedings, course development, hand-off to another instructor, and similar circumstances. Submit the request by ticket or to parasol@ucsd.edu before access lapses.

Students Continuing Work After a Course¶

A student continuing work after a course ends submits an Independent Study Request. The request moves the work into an independent study context and does not extend the course.

How Long Research Access Lasts¶

Independent study and research access is tied to the project rather than to a term. No expiry is published for it. Report a project that has ended or a change of sponsorship.

Access to ETS resources is limited to currently registered UC San Diego students. A change in registration status can therefore end access regardless of the state of the project.

Effects of the End of Access¶

When access ends, the course environment no longer appears among a member's available environments, and its home directory is no longer reachable from that account. The files are not deleted at that point. The purge is a separate, later event. See The Retention Timeline. Instructor and course-wide files can be archived on request. See Archiving on Request.

Warning

Files in a course environment become unreachable on the date access ends, which is earlier than the purge date. Copy them out before access ends. After that date, work in the environment can be recovered only on request to ITS.

Methods for copying files out are in Retrieving Work Before Access Ends.

The Personal Area After a Course¶

The personal area, private/, belongs to the account rather than to a course, and it is not removed when course access ends. It persists until the account itself is removed: at graduation, at separation from the university, or, for a student, after more than two quarters without registration.

The Retention Timeline¶

Course environments are purged one quarter after account deactivation, which is two quarters after the course, excluding Summer.

Course taught in	Access ends	Files purged or archived
Fall 2026	20 March 2027	19 June 2027
Winter 2027	19 June 2027	18 September 2027
Spring 2027	18 December 2027	26 March 2028

The purge excludes individual accounts that have been extended on request (Extending Access for an Individual) and instructor and course-wide files that have been archived (Archiving on Request).

The purge is a lifecycle event. It is separate from routine deletion, such as the Jupyter Trash folder, which empties itself after 7 days.

Archiving on Request¶

Instructor and course-wide files can be archived for up to 3 years on request. Request archiving before the environment is purged, and preferably before access ends. Contact ITS to archive a class, to revive a previously archived class environment, or to have an archive made available for download.

Large datasets cannot be archived. Alternatives exist for course data that must be kept beyond its retention window. Raise the need with ITS early rather than at the purge date.

Student Home Directories¶

Student home directories are not archived. Archiving covers instructor and course-wide files, and an extension covers an individual account. Neither preserves a student's own work by default. A student who needs to keep notebooks copies them out of the environment while it is still reachable.

Session Length¶

Access and retention dates do not govern how long a single session runs. A job runs for 6 hours by default and up to 12 hours when that is requested at launch. See The Runtime Limit. For runs longer than 12 hours, contact parasol@ucsd.edu.

Sessions holding a GPU are also subject to idle culling, which is not an error and does not lose saved work. The criteria are in What Counts as Idle.

Report a problem with this page