Student Cluster Competition        

Violation of any rule may result in a team’s disqualification from the competition or a point penalization at the discretion of the VSCC committee. Any unethical conduct not otherwise covered in these rules will also be penalized at the discretion of the VSCC Committee.

The following violations will result in immediate disqualification:

• Having anyone other than the 6 registered team members in the team’s booth during competition hours.
• Any communication between your cloud resource and a network other than the approved cloud networks.

A. General Competition Rules

1. Safety First: All VSCC operations are always subject to safety as first consideration. If a task cannot be done safely, then it is unacceptable. When in doubt, ask a VSCC committee member or your VSCC team liaison.
2. No Assistance from Non-Team Members: Once the competition starts, student teams will not be allowed to receive assistance from anyone, including their advisor.
3. Stay Under Budget: The Azure budget allowed for the VSCC will be given to teams in advance of the competition. Point penalties will be assessed if teams go over this budget.
4. No External Computational Assistance: All benchmarks and application workload must be run on the Azure cloud using the budget allotted each of the teams. Submitting results generated from any other source will result in disqualification.
5. Teams Must Conduct Themselves Professionally: Teams must conduct themselves professionally and adhere to the SC Code of Conduct. Students must compete fairly and ethically.

B. Azure Cloud Provision

1. Prior to the start of the competition, each team will receive a testing and training budget for the Microsoft Azure cloud. The training and testing budget will be distributed in monthly installments up until the competition.
2. At the start of the competition, each individual team will receive a set budget for the Microsoft Azure cloud. Teams are not allowed to supplement their allotted budget during the competition. No additional cycles will be provided.
3. Teams are allowed to select from the various offerings that the Microsoft Azure cloud provides. Please note that some offerings are more expensive than others.
4. Accepted teams must submit a detailed Final Architecture Proposal by the deadline listed on the SC submissions website. Failure to submit this form by the deadline will result in an automatic disqualification. The detail in the Final Architecture Proposal should be sufficient for the judging panel to determine the required allotment of Azure resources for each resource type used, and whether all the applications will easily port to and run in the proposed deployment.

C. System Software

1. Teams may choose any operating system and software stack that will run the applications and display visualizations to conference attendees.
2. Teams may pre-load and test the applications and other software on their cloud deployment.
3. Teams may study and tune the open-source benchmarks and applications for their platforms. Any changes to application source code must be shared with the VSCC committee.