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Annual SCITAS maintenance#

This communication is of significant importance and may affect your work. We strongly recommend dedicating time to thoroughly read its content.

We are approaching our forthcoming annual maintenance period, scheduled from February 5 to February 19, 2024. This maintenance is essential for enhancing our services and includes the following key upgrades:

  • Central storage and backup infrastructures replacement: Our current systems are due for an upgrade. The new equipment will double our storage capacity and introduce services like low-cost long-term archiving and file export options (NFS, SMB, S3), plus a new pay-per-use billing system for better financial management.
  • Network infrastructure overhaul: We’re upgrading our interconnection network to high-speed infrastructures, moving from DSI-provided equipment to SCITAS-managed solutions.
  • Operating systems and software stack update: To boost security and functionality, we’re transitioning all clusters to the RHEL 9.0 operating system, including updates of Slurm and other key software components.

Impact and Schedule#

To implement these upgrades, a complete shutdown of our infrastructures is unavoidable. We recognize the potential impact on your projects and have planned this maintenance to minimize disruptions:

  • February 5 - 11, 2024: The Helvetios cluster will be offline. Access to /home and /work data remains available via the Izar and Jed clusters. Note that long-term jobs on Izar and Jed will be suspended.
  • February 12 - 19, 2024: All the clusters will be inaccessible. We’ll unmount /home and /work for data synchronization. Important: All the data will be unavailable during this period. If you need access to the data, please download a copy of any necessary files before February 12th.

We aim to restore full services by Monday, February 19, before noon. Expect a follow-up communication before service resumption.

Questions and Assistance:#

For queries or concerns, please contact us at 1234@epfl.ch with “HPC: Scitas Maintenance Query” in the subject line.

Thank you for your cooperation and understanding.