Terms of service

This is the agreement between you and the platform. Registering, topping up or ordering means you have read and accepted it, so please finish it before paying.

1. What these words mean here

• Platform: the Shulan GPU rental platform, and whoever operates it.
• Owner: the individual who hosts an idle machine of theirs with the platform so it can be rented out.
• Instance: the machine the platform creates for you on the owner's machine, belonging to your rental alone.
• Connection key: the credential the platform issues you to reach your instance; you can regenerate it on the page at any time.
• Rendering task: a job you submit to the platform, which it schedules onto its own machines.

2. Accounts

• Give real, working details when you register. Everything done under an account counts as done by its owner.
• One account per person. Do not lend it out or sublet it — responsibility for a violation follows the account.
• Keep your password yourself. If the account is taken over, contact an administrator at once.
• Do not register or use the platform if you are under eighteen.

3. Whole-machine rental

Ordering and billing

• The full amount is held on order: the amount held is unit price × quantity, moved from available to held balance the moment you order.
• Billing units: hourly, daily or monthly. Anything short of one whole unit is still settled as one unit.
• Early release: settled for the time actually used, with the rest returned the way it came.
• Provisioning failure on our side: returned in full, with nothing deducted.
• No automatic renewal: the rental is released when it expires, and the instance and its data are destroyed together.

How to connect

• An instance comes with no access address, no public IP, no subdomain and no web terminal. That follows from where the owner's machine sits on the network, not from us cutting corners.
• The only way in is the relay tool the platform provides plus one ssh command — see the help centre.
• The connection key is your door key; anyone who has it can get into your machine. Once you regenerate it the old one stops working immediately.
• Only tenants the platform has authenticated can reach an instance. The platform never opens that entry to a third party.

Availability and data

• Rental machines come from idle machines hosted by individuals, so a power cut, a dropped line or a shutdown on their side takes your instance away. The platform shows the host state honestly but promises no availability figure.
• If a host stays offline long enough that you cannot use the machine, contact an administrator: it can be refunded pro rata or the rental extended.
• Reinstalling keeps data in /workspace by default; everything else is cleared. Keep long-lived files in /workspace.
• The platform keeps no backup of what is inside an instance. Back up anything important somewhere else yourself.

4. Rendering tasks

• A submitted job joins a queue and the platform schedules it onto its own machines; no start time is promised.
• Cancelling a job, a queue timeout, or a failed run all refund automatically.
• Rendering tasks use the platform's own pool and cannot be used to deploy a model or serve anything to the outside. For an exclusive machine, use whole-machine rental.
• Runtime and resource ceilings per job are the ones stated on the job page.

5. Hard limits

• No mining of any kind: including running a miner, connecting to a pool, relaying mining traffic through the machine, or turning compute into virtual currency by any means.
• No unlawful content: nothing created, stored or distributed that laws or regulations prohibit, or that infringes anyone else's rights.
• No attacking others: port scanning, password brute force, denial of service, or breaking into or trying to break into any system.
• No using the machine as a hop: proxies, tunnel exits, anonymity nodes, or relaying traffic for any of those.
• No subletting or sharing: subletting, lending or reselling your instance or account to a third party.
• No dodging metering or billing: faking usage data, or bypassing or breaking the platform's control channel.

6. How a violation is handled

• Detection: a resident program on the owner's machine reports the list of processes running inside the instance and the platform matches it against known signatures. This is automatic and is used only to identify the conduct listed above — see the privacy policy for the scope.
• Action: on a finding the platform stops the instance at once, blocks it from being powered on again, and records the finding on the platform.
• Money: the platform may terminate that rental, and amounts already held or settled are not refunded.
• Serious cases: the account is banned and the records are reported and handed to the authorities as the law requires.
• Appeal: if you believe the finding is wrong, contact an administrator. If it checks out as a mistake, the flag is cleared and the instance can be powered on again.
• Your responsibility: business interruption, data loss or third-party claims caused by a violation stop are yours to bear, and the platform owes no compensation for them.

7. Your data

• What the platform handles, how it is used and how long it is kept is set out in the privacy policy, which forms part of this agreement.
• Business data inside an instance is yours. The platform does not go looking through your files and does not hand them to a third party, unless the law compels it.
• When a rental ends the instance and its data are destroyed together — the platform keeps no backup and no copy.

8. Disclaimers and limits on liability

• The platform provides the service as it stands and promises no availability, performance or stability figures, nor that an instance will suit any particular purpose of yours.
• Interruptions from power cuts, dropped lines, carrier failures or force majeure carry no compensation from the platform.
• The platform owes no compensation for indirect losses, lost profit or lost data.
• Where the platform does owe compensation, the total is capped at what you actually paid for that rental.

9. Changes to and ending of the service

• The platform may change prices, rules and features. A rental already ordered runs to its end at the price in force when it was ordered — no mid-term price changes.
• If you seriously breach this agreement the platform may end the service and ban the account immediately.
• You may release your rentals and stop using the platform at any time.

10. Updates to these terms

Updates are published on this page. If you keep using the platform afterwards you are taken to accept them; if you do not, stop using it and release any rental you still hold.

11. Governing law and disputes

This agreement is governed by the laws of the People's Republic of China. Disputes are settled by negotiation first; failing that, either side may bring proceedings before the court with jurisdiction where the platform operator is based.

Related: Help centre · Privacy policy · Legal notice