FAS Research Computing - Notishistorik

FASRC Monthly Maintenance will occur April 3rd 2023 7am-11am
Please note that because of the June downtime, we will not hold monthly maintenance in May and July.

JUNE DOWNTIME AND OS/SOFTWARE CHANGES
The MGHPCC yearly power downtime will run June 5th-8th with return to full service the morning of Friday June 9th. For timeline and initially details on the downtime, our switch Rocky Linux, and changes to how we do software, please see: https://www.rc.fas.harvard.edu/blog/2023-downtime/

Also see our Rocky 8 Transition Guide for information on the OS and upcoming test cluster. We will also offer training and consulting in the coming months (TBA). https://docs.rc.fas.harvard.edu/kb/rocky-8-transition-guide/

Notices about the downtime with links to training, docs, and FAQs will commence in a few weeks.

TRAINING CALENDAR
Upcoming new user training and other sessions can be found on our training calendar: https://www.rc.fas.harvard.edu/upcoming-training/

APRIL 3rd MAINTENANCE

• Login node and VDI reboots
  -- Audience: Anyone logged into a a login node or VDI/OOD node
  -- Impact: Login and VDI/OOD nodes will rebooted during this maintenance window

• RCSMB server network changes
  -- Audience: Mounted Samba shares connected at "rcsmb.rc.fas.harvard.edu"
  -- Impact: None expected. The possibility of brief disconnects
  is possible but unlikely.

• Squid internet proxy update
  -- Audience: Any users/session/process using the internet proxy (https://docs.rc.fas.harvard.edu/kb/proxy-settings/)
  -- Impact: The proxy will be unavailable while updating

• Scratch cleanup ( https://docs.rc.fas.harvard.edu/kb/policy-scratch/ )
  -- Audience: Cluster users
  -- Impact: Files older than 90 days will be removed.
  planning for a scheduled maintenance during that time.

Thanks,
FAS Research Computing
Department and Service Catalog: https://www.rc.fas.harvard.edu/
Documentation: https://docs.rc.fas.harvard.edu/
Status Page: https://status.rc.fas.harvard.edu/

NOTICES

The annual MGHPCC power downtime will take place June 5th-8th, 2023
Calendar Event: https://www.rc.fas.harvard.edu/events/mghpcc-power-shutdown-2023/
Blog Post: https://www.rc.fas.harvard.edu/blog/2023-downtime/

GENERAL MAINTENANCE

• NOTE: All jobs will be paused during maintenance to reduce heat load and allow data center cooling maintenance to take place.

• Login node updates and reboots, VDI reboots
  Audience: VDI/OpenOnDemand users
  Impact: VDI will be unavailable during this and the above Slurm upgrade

• RCSMB (samba) Boston network changes
  Audience: RCSMB shares mounted out of Boston
  Impact: Could cause brief share disconnects during updates

• UPDATE: Nexus control plane supervisor switchover - ETA 5 minutes, short network disconnect while restarting

• Login node updates/reboot and VDI node reboots
  Audience: Anyone logged into a a login node or VDI/OOD node
  Impact: Login and VDI/OOD nodes will be unavailable while updating and rebooting

• Scratch cleanup ( https://docs.rc.fas.harvard.edu/kb/policy-scratch/ )
  Audience: Cluster users
  Impact: Files older than 90 days will be removed.
  Reminder: Scratch 90-day file retention purging runs occur regularly not just during maintenance periods.

SECURITY UPDATES
HUIT and the CIO Council have set a goal of reducing risk across all schools within the University. All schools are looking to reduce their outstanding vulnerability count 75% by June 2023. These numbers are based on HUIT security scans of our infrastructure.
We at FAS Research Computing are responsible for thousands of physical and virtual machines. To make progress in reducing our total open vulnerabilty count, we’re going to update internal and user facing systems as part of scheduled monthly maintenance windows and on a rolling basis outside of these windows. This will generally mean running OS and security updates as needed and rebooting these nodes when required.

This month, these hosts will get updates as part of our scheduled maintenance:
boslogin01 - boslogin04
holylogin01 - holylogin04
holydtn01 - holydtn04
xdmod4.rc.fas.harvard.edu
rchelp.rc.fas.harvard.edu (our ticket system)
rcsmtp.rc.fas.harvard.edu (our mail system)

Thanks!
FAS Research Computing
Department and Service Catalog: https://www.rc.fas.harvard.edu/
Documentation: https://docs.rc.fas.harvard.edu/
Status Page: https://status.rc.fas.harvard.edu/

NOTICES

GPU PARTITIONS
The gpu_test partition is back in service. Job limits are now 64 cores, 8 GPU's, and 750G of RAM. Users can run up to 2 jobs.

HOLIDAY NOTICE
February 20th is a university holiday (Presidents' Day)

GENERAL MAINTENANCE

• OnDemand Version upgrade to 2.0.29
  Audience: VDI/OpenOnDemand users
  Impact: VDI will be unavailable during this and the above Slurm upgrade

• Domain controller updates
  Audience: All cluster
  Impact: Could briefly impact some older systems, otherwise no impact expected

• Login node and VDI node reboots and firmware updates
  Audience: Anyone logged into a a login node or VDI/OOD node
  Impact: Login and VDI/OOD nodes will be unavailable while updating and rebooting

• Scratch cleanup ( https://docs.rc.fas.harvard.edu/kb/policy-scratch/ )
  Audience: Cluster users
  Impact: Files older than 90 days will be removed.

Reminder: Scratch 90-day file retention purging runs occur regularly not just during maintenance periods.

Thanks!
FAS Research Computing
Department and Service Catalog: https://www.rc.fas.harvard.edu/
Documentation: https://docs.rc.fas.harvard.edu/
Status Page: https://status.rc.fas.harvard.edu/