Entitlements in bwCloud-OS

⚠️ Please Note: The entitlement model is currently in the process of restructuring, and the information on this page may be outdated.

Entitlements in bwCloud-OS define who can access the platform, how many resources they may use, and under what conditions. They are issued and managed by the user’s home institution and play a central role in how bwCloud-OS is used and funded.

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1. Access Control via Entitlements

Entitlements determine whether a user is allowed to access bwCloud-OS at all. This decision is made exclusively by the user's home institution.

• Since 01.10.2019, the following rule applies:

  No entitlement from the home institution = No access to bwCloud-OS

  The bwCloud-OS team has no authority to grant access without an official entitlement.

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2. Current Entitlement Types

There are currently two types of entitlements:

• bwCloud-Basic Aimed at students and beginner users, offering limited, free resources.
• bwCloud-Extended Intended for advanced or long-term users who require more resources. This entitlement allows full access to available instance flavors and will incur costs in the future.

📌 A user account can have both entitlements — in that case, bwCloud-Extended takes precedence.

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3. Resource Usage and Flavor Access

Entitlements determine which flavor types (resource profiles) a user can launch:

• bwCloud-Basic
  • Only allows launching nano or tiny instances.
  • Intended as a trial access, mainly for students.
  • These instances are free of charge and best suited for:
    • Theses
    • Temporary servers
    • Software repositories
• bwCloud-Extended
  • Grants access to all available flavors.
  • Users receive significantly higher quotas.
  • VMs can run indefinitely (until deleted by the user).
  • This entitlement is meant for operational workloads, research, teaching infrastructure, etc.
  • Usage will be billed in the future via institutional cost models.

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4. VM Lifespan and Cleanup Policy

To ensure availability and efficient use of resources:

• bwCloud-Basic
  • Not intended for permanently running services.
  • VMs may be regularly deleted by the bwCloud team to:
    • Clean up unused instances
    • Free capacity for new users
  • Expect VMs to be temporary and potentially removed without notice.
• bwCloud-Extended
  • No such restrictions apply.
  • VMs are persistent and remain active until the user deletes them.

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5. Cost Allocation and Funding Model

Entitlements also help define who is financially responsible for resource usage:

• To ensure sustainable operation and future hardware/software upgrades, bwCloud-OS is moving toward a cost allocation model.
• The user’s institution is responsible for:
  • Verifying users have access to funding.
  • Covering the collective costs for all users from that institution.
• bwCloud-OS will generate aggregated usage reports and invoices per institution — no individual billing.
• bwCloud-Basic usage remains free of charge, as it is funded by the Ministry of Science, Research and the Arts (MWK).

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6. Faster, Automated Registration

• The entitlement system enables automated evaluation during registration.
• Users receive immediate access once their entitlement is confirmed — no manual activation required.
• This streamlines onboarding and allows users to begin using bwCloud-OS within minutes.

The entitlements serve several purposes. The most important points in overview:

1. Entitlements answer the question of who is allowed access to bwCloud-OS and who is not based on decisions made by the users’ home institutions. The users' home institiution independently decide on the allocation of entitlements to their members - and thus ultimately who and how the bwCloud-OS should be used. On our side applies from 01.10.2019: No release by the home institution via Entitlement = No access to bwCloud-OS
2. Entitlements define how many resources a user is allowed to use. Currently, there are two sort of entitlements:
   • bwCloud-Basic
   • bwCloud-Extended Accounts can also include both entitlement elements - in this case the "higher ranking" entitlement element (bwCloud-Extended) . With regard to resources, the differentiation is based on the flavor table:
   1. Users who only have the bwCloud-Basic entitlement can start an instance of either "nano" or "tiny". This is a kind of "trial access" and is mainly targeted at students. Instances of this flavor are free of charge.
   2. Users who have the "bwCloud-Extended" entitlement will be given significantly more quotas and can therefore use all the flavors offered. The use of the bwCloud-OS will incur costs in the future.
3. With the Entitlements we regulate how we handle the instances The Entitlement bwCloud-Basic is mainly addressed to students who want to use the bwCloud-OS for various purposes such as theses or as a software repository. Since there is a large number of students in Baden-Württemberg, we expect a correspondingly large number of small VMs to accumulate over time. At the same time, we assume that these VMs will most likely be forgotten and stay online even after their original purpose is no longer applicable". The bwIDM Entitlement bwCloud-Basic is not intended to run a (system) service permanently. We will therefore regularly delete all VMs started by users with entitlement bwCloud-Basic to "clean up" our systems and to give other users the chance to start an instance. The bwIDM Entitlement bwCloud-Basic is not intended for permanently running VMs. With bwCloud-Extended these restrictions do not exist. Here the following applies: the VMs run until they are independently deleted by the users.
4. With the entitlements we know who can potentially pay for the virtual machines To ensure the sustainable operation of the bwCloud-OS and a regular exchange of hardware and software In order to be able to ensure this, it is necessary to charge for the services used. We therefore would like to establish a cost allocation model. With the income generated in this way, we intend to renew our hardware infrastructure regularly and adapt it to requirements. In order to be able to avoid individual invoices with the users, we are going to generate so-called collective overviews and invoices", because only the home region know their users and know who has the appropriate resources to operate VMs. With the award of the Entitlements bwCloud Extended for a user, the respective home region signals two things:
   1. the user has access to an account with appropriate means and that
   2. the home site can therefore pay the total bill for the resource consumption of all users of the site. How the costs are then allocated internally at the home site is again a matter for the respective site and can be organised individually and according to their local guidelines. Resources operated with the bwIDM Entitlement bwCloud-Basic remain free of charge: this flavor is supported by the Ministry of Science, Research and the Arts (MWK).
5. We accelerate the registration process Through the automated evaluation of the bwIDM Entitlements in the course of the registration for the service, users receive immediate feedback when the account has been set up in the bwCloud. No manual intervention from our side is required anymore - and so everybody wins: Users enter the bwCloud-OS within minutes and we don't have to activate anyone manually anymore.