Long-running applications

Nuvolos supports long-running applications whilst attempting to automatically stop applications which are no longer required to run.

Nuvolos aims to provide the maximal resources for applications that require it, whilst freeing up resources from unused applications to optimize organization resource usage. As described below, we provide convenient default policies that:

• Allow long running computations to finish without user interaction.

• Stop inactive applications, to free up resources for other organization members / minimize credit usage.

We achieve the above through our automatic inactivity stopper as described below.

For certain applications such as RStudio, long-running computations are best done using specific features off the app (e.g. RStudio jobs). Please take a look at the application-specific guides as well.

Automatic stopping due to inactivity

Nuvolos automatically stops inactive Applications to allocate resources efficiently. Research and education Spaces are handled differently. The policy is enforced regardless of the Application type or size.

Research Spaces

In research Spaces, an Application is considered active if either of the following is true:

• It is actively opened on Nuvolos and in focus in the browser, or

• It is actively computing (using more than half of a single virtual CPU).

Default inactivity limits in research Spaces:

• 6 hours for Included-size Applications.

• 1 hour for credit-based Applications.

Space administrators can set the inactivity limit between 1 and 24 hours for Included-size Applications. This setting has no effect on credit-based Applications.

Researchers can launch long-running computations and the Application will keep running while it is actively computing. If the computation finishes (either by completion or by error) and the Application is not opened on Nuvolos, it is auto-stopped. We therefore recommend explicitly capturing and saving output logs to ensure that any warnings or errors are preserved.

Education spaces

In education Spaces, the default inactivity limit for any Application type is 1 hour. To keep an Application active, the Application must be in focus in your browser for more than one (uninterrupted) minute every hour.

Configure the inactivity limit

Each Application can have its inactivity limit set on the Configuration screen, within the limits above. For more details see Application configuration.

Long-running Applications

Nuvolos supports long-running Applications while automatically stopping inactive ones, balancing maximal resource availability for active workloads against efficient release of unused resources.

Application-specific long-running guidance

• RStudio - for long-running computations, use RStudio jobs (the application's own background-job feature) rather than running directly in the foreground.

• JupyterLab - for long-running notebooks, use Papermill rather than running cells directly. This avoids the long-standing cell-output streaming issue: when you close your browser window during a long-running notebook, no new messages stream to the cell output when you return.