- 2013-05-23: OSG Computing Workshop June 5
The Holland Computing Center would like to invite you or your interested students to attend a small, informal, and free workshop at the Schorr center. We'll be covering topics including job submission to local schedulers and the Open Science Grid. This style of computing is useful for a large batch of independent jobs. It is used in bioinformatics, particle physics, proteomics, film rendering, and other computational fields. Bring your laptop -- we will do our best to have you submitting jobs to the Open Science Grid before lunch. The day will commence at 9 in the morning and finish up in the afternoon. Seating is limited and we will be serving lunch to those that request it. We do need those interested to respond prior to May 24th (this coming Friday) in order to make arrangements. Sign up now! We still have a few seats available. Those that are planning on attending should send an email to Carl Lundstedt, clundstedt@unl.edu with the subject line "Pivot 2013 Workshop". Regards, Holland Computing Center
details... - 2013-05-21: Tusker Downtime update
The Lustre upgrade and transition is ongoing. Details may be found here: http://hcc.unl.edu/hcccreditedit/messages.php?idmessages=111 Further updates will be only at the URL above, with a final notice sent to this list when Tusker is again available for general use.
details... - 2013-05-17: REMINDER: TUSKER downtime Monday, May 20, 2013
Tusker will be down Monday, May 20 for file system maintenance. The scheduler will be changed to SLURM as well. This was announced previously (http://hcc.unl.edu/hcccreditedit/messages.php?idmessages=111); this is a reminder only.
details... - 2013-05-08: Tusker downtime May 20 for maintenance
Tusker will be unavailable on May 20 for filesystem maintenance. This will be an extended downtime; the Lustre filesystem will be expanded and reconfigured. Data will not be deleted, but significant changes will be implemented. ***Users are asked to remove any unneeded data from the /work filesystem before that time; the less data, the shorter the required downtime. **** The scheduler will be changed from Maui/Torque to SLURM during this time as well. SLURM has been in place on Sandhills for some time with good results; an overview may be found here: https://hcc-docs.unl.edu/display/HCCDOC/Submitting+Jobs. An open house workshop will be held the week of May 20 to aid users in modifying existing scripts for the SLURM scheduler. As always, please contact hcc-support@unl.edu if you have questions or concerns. Best regards, David Swanson
details... - 2013-04-07: Tusker login node outage, service restored
On Sunday, the Tusker login node, tusker.unl.edu, had a software issue causing SSH login failures. The service is now running normally. Fixing the issue required a reboot of the login node. Running jobs were not affected.
details... - 2013-03-07: Tusker back open with trepidation
Dear Tusker User: Since yesterday's Tusker shutdown, we have verified that file system integrity is in tact -- it appears there is no data loss as a result of the recent outages. Now the bad news: the root cause has not been resolved. We have taken some minor steps that we hope will help, but neither Dell nor Terascala are able to provide a complete solution at this time. They are working together to find such a solution. Now what? This has been an intermittent problem -- many users' jobs have not failed because of it to date. We will thus open Tusker back up for use, in the hopes that the above will remain true, while we work toward two possible resolutions: 1) either Dell and/or Terascala are able to resolve the problem and provide steps for a fix; 2) we are rolling our own Lustre filesystem on separate hardware. When a vendor is unable to add value, I believe it is only rational to investigate a vendor-free solution. The state of Nebraska will not allow me to take bets on which solution will be ready first; either way, final implementation will likely require some time and a further downtime. Please let us know immediately if you encounter any further issues on Tusker. We'll do our best to resolve this as quickly as possible; I do apologize for the inconvenience and frustration this has caused. Best regards, David Swanson
details... - 2013-03-06: Tusker: Unplanned Downtime: Dell/Terascala Filesystem outage
Tusker is down for maintenance. The Dell/Terascala file system has experienced repeated failures the last several days. This system provides /work -- data loss is currently not expected. Work is in progress with the vendor to correct this situation. Existing jobs will be allowed to finish if possible; no new jobs will be deployed until the condition of the /work filesystem improves. This is an unplanned outage. Further details will be posted online until the system is back up. We apologize for this inconvenience. If you have urgent needs, please let us know and we will attempt to accommodate you if possible. Firefly and Sandhills are not affected by this downtime.
details... - 2013-03-06: OSG Summer School June 24-27
With apologies for the previous truncated mailing. ANNOUNCING THE 2013 OPEN SCIENCE GRID USER SCHOOL! If you could access thousands, maybe millions, of hours of computing, how would it transform your research? What discoveries would you make? We are looking for qualified students to attend the 2013 Open Science Grid (OSG) User School, where they will learn how to use high-throughput computing to harness vast amounts of computing power for research. Using lectures, discussions, roleplays, and lots of hands-on work with OSG experts in high-throughput computing, students will learn how HTC systems work, how to run and manage many jobs and huge datasets to implement a full scientific computing workflow, and where to turn for help and more info. Worried about costs? Successful applicants will get financial support to attend the OSG School (June 24-27) at the beautiful University of Wisconsin in Madison. Plus, some students will receive financial support to attend XSEDE13 (July 22-25) in San Diego, California. Ideal candidates are science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) graduate students whose research demands large-scale computing. Also, advanced undergraduates are encouraged to apply. Others may apply too; funding is tight this year, but we consider all great candidates! IMPORTANT DATES Application Period: March 4-29 OSG User School: June 24-27 XSEDE13 Conference: July 22-25 MORE INFORMATION AND APPLICATIONS Web: https://www.opensciencegrid.org/bin/view/Education/OSGUserSchool2013 Email: osg-school-2013-info@opensciencegrid.org Please forward this announcement to help us reach potential students. And consider posting our flyer where appropriate: https://www.opensciencegrid.org/twiki/pub/Education/OSGUserSchool2013/2013-osg-user-school-flyer.pdf
details... - 2013-03-05: Tusker /work interruption, service restored
On Tusker, the Lustre filesystem for /work experienced an issue at approximately 4:11am Tuesday morning. It was resolved at 8:50am. During this time, jobs accessing /work may have failed with I/O errors.
details... - 2013-03-01: Tusker /work interruption, service restored
On Tusker, the Lustre filesystem for /work experienced an issue at approximately 1:20am Friday morning. It was resolved at 8:50am. During this time, jobs accessing /work may have failed with I/O errors. An issue with Tusker job submissions has also been resolved. We apologize for the inconvenience.
details... - 2013-02-19: HPC Applications Specialist
HCC announces a further opening - and with regret announces that Dr. Ashu Guru will be leaving HCC in May. We extend our thanks to Ashu and wish him well in his new position at the Raikes' School. A search for this position begins immediately. Please encourage any interested colleagues to apply! This position is responsible for contributing to a broad mission of the Holland Computing Center (HCC), promoting the use of high performance cyberinfrastructure and a wide variety of research projects requiring high performance and/or high throughput computing, storage, and other cyberinfrastructure. Responsible for working with researchers and supercomputer system administration staff and students to produce and optimize code, and facilitate and organize grant proposals related to, and supportive of, the facilities of the HCC. Criminal background check will be conducted. Excellent benefits including staff/dependent scholarship program. Applicant review begins Mar 6. View requisition S_130092 at https://employment.unl.edu for details and to apply. UNL is committed to a pluralistic campus community through affirmative action, equal opportunity, work-life balance, and dual careers. For further details see https://employment.unl.edu/postings/34556
details... - 2013-02-13: FIrefly Retirement this summer
Dear Colleagues, The Firefly cluster will be retired in the next few months. Please move workflows to Tusker as soon as possible. Data on /work is not backed up -- only expendable data should reside there. If you need assistance with this move, please contact hcc-support@unl.edu. Tusker has been in place for the better part of a year, and a second hardware acquisition is planned for later this summer. The remainder of Firefly will be retired when the new hardware installation date nears. This is currently planned for June, 2013. Further, a significant hardware failure, while not hoped for or expected, would likely result in immediate retirement of Firefly. Dell no longer produces SC1435 nodes. Panasas no longer sells the storage product we continue to use. Force10's switch fabric is out of warranty, and Cisco no longer produces Infiniband of any kind. This email is to emphasize the need for current Firefly users to plan for this upcoming event. Expect further communication as the retirement date approaches. If you have any questions or particular concerns, please let us know. In the mean time, continue to use Firefly, but caveat emptor -- its days are numbered. Best regards, David David R. Swanson, Director Holland Computing Center University of Nebraska
details... - 2013-01-04: Sandhills login node network outage, service restored
Between 5:00pm and 7:00pm today, there was a network outage affecting access to the Sandhills login node. Network service has been restored. Running jobs were not affected.
details... - 2012-12-17: TUSKER: service restored
Tusker maintenance complete, the system is now available for use.
details... - 2012-12-09: Tusker NFS restored, outage affected /home and /util
The NFS server for Tusker stopped responding Sunday morning. This caused access to /home and /util to stall, as well as affecting SSH logins. After a reboot, the NFS service appears to be working normally. We apologize for the inconvenience.
details... - 2012-11-26: Tusker Shutdown Dec. 17
A December 17th shutdown is planned for Tusker. During the shutdown we will be performing maintenance on, and upgrading, the Lustre storage system which supplies the /work filesystem. We request users to remove as much data as possible from the /work filesystem between now and then to 1) ensure it will be possible to wait until after finals week (Dec. 17) and 2) to help minimize the time required to perform the upgrade. Additional disks will be added to the storage array to improve reliability of the system -- the less data there is to move and/or re-stripe, the faster this process will be. Tusker will be made available immediately after this maintenance is complete.
details... - 2012-11-01: SANDHILLS: Brief outage of logon node today shortly after 5pm
A brief outage is necessary on the SANDHILLS logon node to finish up maintenance operations from yesterday. No running jobs will be impacted. The outage should last approximately 45 minutes and will start at shortly after 5:00 pm. If you are logged onto SANDHILLS you will be kicked off and will not be able to log in until the maintenance is complete (approx. 45 minutes).
details... - 2012-11-01: SANDHILLS: service restored
SANDHILLS brief maintenance complete, the system is now available for use.
details... - 2012-10-31: Temporary network outage affected Tusker and Firefly
Between 1:00pm and 1:30pm today, there was a network outage between UNL and PKI. This affected access to Tusker and Firefly. Network service has been restored. Our network provider was performing scheduled maintenance and a failover path did not take over as anticipated.
details... - 2012-10-31: SANDHILLS: Maintenance complete
Maintenance on SANDHILLS cluster is complete. New filesystems are installed and modules are reconfigured. Pending jobs are running and system is available for use.
details... - 2012-10-26: Module change on Wednesday, 10/31
Dear HCC user community, The following will affect those of you who use the utility "module". Otherwise, please forgive the interruption. As announced earlier this month, in an effort to improve our service and stability, we will be simplifying certain modules by dropping minor revisions in their name. This transition is being performed in several steps. The contracted set of modules has coexisted with the explicitly named set for the last several weeks. As of Wednesday, 10/31 (yes, Halloween) only the contracted set will be supported, although pre-existing modules will be moved to a 'deprecated' area that you can access using the command module load deprecated Deprecated modules will be maintained for at least a month, and then subject to deletion. We will be more assertive in the future in keeping our software up to date. As this happens we will move older module versions to the deprecated group in anticipation of their ultimate removal from our systems. Please let us know if you have questions or concerns. Thank you. David Swanson
details... - 2012-10-25: SANDHILLS: Outage planned for SANDHILLS Wednesday, October 31
On Wednesday October 31 SANDHILLS will be shutdown at about 10:00 a.m. in order to upgrade filesystems. Because of the nature of the upgrade all running jobs will be killed. Some research groups will be impacted by new quota policies. You will receive a separate email if this applies to you. We expect the outage to last no longer than four hours. Jobs may be delayed leading up to the maintenance window. Any jobs which cannot complete before the maintenance window will be held until work is complete.
details... - 2012-10-25: HCC Supercomputing Symposium
Wednesday, November 7th, in conjunction with the UNL Research Fair, will be the HCC Supercomputing Symposium at the Lincoln City Union. The schedule is posted here: http://researchfair.unl.edu/schedule/ This symposium will emphasize topics directly applicable to the HCC user community -- general talks followed by tutorials. A major purchase coming this spring is among the topics that will begin at 1pm. Please give HCC your feedback on the planned agenda and related topics by filling out the following very brief survey: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/WGT385V
details... - 2012-10-10: SANDHILLS: NFS server unresponsive
NFS server on SANDHILLS became unresponsive, we are looking into the problem now and will update you when it's fixed.
details... - 2012-10-10: SANDHILLS: Back to normal
SANDHILLS: NFS service restored. Everything should be working as normal. No data was affected as a result of this problem.
details... - 2012-10-07: Tusker /work filesystem performance issues
We are investigating performance issues with the /work filesystem on Tusker. Some accesses, particularly directory listings, are responding extremely slowly. We will update the details link below with more information as it becomes available.
details... - 2012-10-01: Firefly: /work deletions needed
2012-10-01 Firefly only: usage of the shared /work filesystem is nearing capacity. Users are requested to make voluntary deletions of unneeded files. HCC Staff will be required to make deletions if space is not freed up soon.
details... - 2012-09-19: Firefly storage firmware upgrade - September 19, 2012
A time-sensitive firmware upgrade is needed for the Panasas storage array on Firefly. We will start the firmware upgrade at 11:00 am September 19, 2012 and expect to be done by 1:00 pm. While we do not anticipate a full scale outage during this upgrade, running processes that access /work or /home will hang during the procedure and should recover when the upgrade is finished. An announcement will be sent out once we complete the firmware upgrade.
details... - 2012-09-19: Firefly Panasas firmware upgrade complete
The firmware upgrade of Firefly's Panasas storage array is complete. Jobs that were held before the upgrade have been released to run.
details... - 2012-09-14: HCC Position Opening
The Holland Computing Center (HCC) is a large High Performance Computing facility supporting the NU system. HCC is looking to add a motivated, talented individual to work on ongoing international research collaborations such as the CMS (Compact Muon Solenoid) project. This is one of the particle accelerator experiments located at the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva, Switzerland. HCC seeks to hire a Systems Integrator with the following duties: Provide systems support for research computing, integrating distributed software components for building a robust infrastructure to support interdisciplinary research projects. Work with systems architect to create and combine components which integrate into a larger distributed framework for research support. Work in new development as well as refactoring and maintenance of legacy systems. Criminal background check will be conducted. Excellent benefits including staff/dependent scholarship program. Applicant review begins Sept 20. View requisition 120725 at https://employment.unl.edu for details and to apply. UNL is committed to a pluralistic campus community through affirmative action, equal opportunity, work-life balance, and dual careers.
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