Skip to main content

Administration

Workstation administration is how a workspace admin keeps an eye on running and suspended workstations across the organization and prevents forgotten sessions from burning through the workspace deposit. This page covers the admin activity view, the actions available from it, and the auto-terminate policy for long-suspended workstations. It is written for users with the workspace admin role; see What a workstation is for the end-user lifecycle.

Monitoring workstations across the workspace​

Every workstation created in your workspace, by any user, shows up under Workspace Admin then Activity. The activity page lists each workstation along with:

  • The owner.
  • The project it is assigned to, if any.
  • Current state (Running, Suspended, or transitional states).
  • How long it has been in that state, so you can spot instances that have been running overnight or suspended for days.

Use the activity view as your daily starting point. Sorting by time in the current state surfaces the workstations most likely to be forgotten.

Taking action on a workstation​

From the activity list, you can act on any workstation without needing access to the owner's account:

  • Shutdown. Suspends a running workstation. The disk is preserved and the owner can resume later. Use this to stop billing for compute when someone left a workstation running.
  • Delete. Terminates the workstation and releases its disk. Use this when a workstation is no longer needed and should stop accruing storage costs. Deletion is not reversible.
  • Assign to a Project. Moves the workstation into a specific project so its spend rolls up correctly. Useful when users launched a workstation without selecting a project up front.
Deletion is final

Deleting a workstation removes its disk. Confirm with the owner that anything worth keeping has been synced to Files and storage or to the attached Jobs before you delete.

Auto-terminating long-suspended workstations​

Suspended workstations do not use compute, but they do hold storage. Over time, forgotten suspended workstations accumulate and draw down the workspace deposit. The auto-terminate policy lets you cap how long a workstation can sit suspended before Rescale terminates it automatically.

To configure the policy:

  1. Open Workspace Settings.
  2. Go to Policies then Workstation Settings.
  3. Enable the auto-terminate policy.
  4. Set the suspension threshold in days. A workstation that remains continuously suspended for more than that number of days is terminated.
  5. Optionally add notifications. You can configure one or more notifications to be sent to the workstation owner some number of hours before termination (for example 24, 12, and 1 hour out).

The policy is off by default. Once you turn it on, it applies to both new and existing workstations. If a workstation is already past the threshold when you enable the policy, the workstation is terminated immediately.

Suspension time resets on resume

The threshold counts time since the workstation was last suspended, not total cumulative suspended time. If the owner resumes the workstation at any point, the clock resets when they suspend again.

Example timeline​

To make the semantics concrete:

  • An admin sets the policy to 7 days and enables notifications at 24 hours, 12 hours, and 1 hour before termination.
  • User A starts Workstation1 on 1/1/23 at 8 AM and suspends it at 6 PM the same day.
  • User A resumes Workstation1 on 1/4/23 at 8 AM and suspends it again on 1/5/23 at 8 AM.
  • The 7-day clock starts at the most recent suspension (1/5/23 at 8 AM), so the workstation becomes eligible for termination on 1/12/23 at 8 AM.
  • User A receives notifications at 1/11/23 8 AM, 1/11/23 8 PM, and 1/12/23 7 AM.
  • If User A does not resume the workstation before 1/12/23 8 AM, Rescale terminates it automatically.

Controlling who can launch workstations​

Workstation launch permissions are governed by the same workspace controls that apply to jobs and templates. Two levers are particularly relevant for workstations:

  • Project assignment. Require that every workstation be assigned to a project so spend is attributable. Use the activity view to catch unassigned workstations and assign them retroactively.
  • Template restrictions. In the templates admin controls, you can restrict who can create templates and require users to launch jobs or workstations only from approved templates. See Templates for the end-user template flow and Admin and billing for the broader policy controls.