Category: Uncategorized

[Update 5/16/22 9:20 AM]

All PACE clusters, including Phoenix, are now ready for research and learning. We have restored stability of the Phoenix Lustre storage system and released jobs on Phoenix.

Thank you for your patience as we worked to restore Lustre project & scratch storage on the Phoenix cluster. In working with our support vendor, we identified a scanning tool that was causing instability on the scratch filesystem and impacting the entire storage system. This has been disabled pending further investigation.

Due to the complications, we will not proceed with monthly deletions of old files on the Phoenix & Hive scratch filesystems tomorrow. Although only Phoenix was impacted, we will also delay Hive to avoid confusion. Files for which researchers were notified this month will not be deleted at this time, and you will receive another notification prior to any future deletion. Researchers are still encouraged to delete unneeded scratch files to preserve space on the system.

Campus network disaster recovery testing will disable Phoenix, Hive, PACE-ICE, and COC-ICE from 5:00 PM on Friday, June 10, through 12:00 noon on Monday, June 13. The next maintenance period for all PACE clusters is August 10, 2022, at 6:00 AM through August 12, 2022, at 11:59 PM. An additional maintenance period is tentatively scheduled for November 2-4.

Status of activities:

ITEMS REQUIRING USER ACTION:

• None expected on research clusters

ITEMS NOT REQUIRING USER ACTION:

• [Complete][ICE only][System] PACE-ICE and COC-ICE instructional clusters will receive an operating system upgrade to RHEL7.9, to match the research clusters. Visit our documentation for a guide on potential impacts. A testflight environment is not available for ICE.
• [Postponed][Phoenix, Hive][Open OnDemand] Deploy R 8.3 on Open OnDemand
• [Complete][Phoenix][Storage] multiple upgrades to Lustre project and scratch storage
• [Complete][Hive][Storage] replace cable connecting GPFS project and scratch storage
• [Complete][Network] Upgrade interfaces to 100 GbE on Globus Vapor endpoint and border storage
• [Complete][Network] Add redundant 100GbE switch to storage servers, increasing capacity
• [Complete][System] Install operating system patches
• [Complete][System] Update operating system on administrative servers
• [Complete][Network] Move BCDC DNS appliance to new IP address
• [Complete][Hive][System] Upgrade cuda and Nvidia drivers on Hive to match other clusters with cuda 11.5
• [Complete][System] Remove unused nouveau graphics kernel from GPU nodes
• [Complete][Network] Set static IP addresses on schedulers to improve reliability
• [Complete][Datacenter] Cooling loop maintenance
• [Complete][Datacenter] Georgia Power Microgrid testing

If you have any questions or concerns, please contact us at pace-support@oit.gatech.edu.

 

[Update 5/13/22 3:25 PM]

The PACE team and our support vendor’s engineers continue working to restore functionality of the Phoenix Lustre filesystem following the upgrade. Testing and remediation will continue today and through the weekend. At this time, we hope to be able to open Phoenix for research on Monday. We appreciate your patience as our maintenance period is extended. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact us at pace-support@oit.gatech.edu.

 

[Update 5/13/22 2:00 PM]

PACE maintenance continues on Phoenix, while the Hive, Firebird, PACE-ICE, COC-ICE, and Buzzard clusters are now ready for research and learning.

Phoenix remains under maintenance, as complications arose following the upgrade of Lustre project and scratch storage. PACE and our storage vendor are working to resolve the issue at this time. We will update you when Phoenix is ready for research.

Jobs on the Hive, Firebird, PACE-ICE, COC-ICE, and Buzzard clusters have been released.

Campus network disaster recovery testing will disable Phoenix, Hive, PACE-ICE, and COC-ICE from 5:00 PM on Friday, June 10, through 12:00 noon on Monday, June 13. The next maintenance period for all PACE clusters is August 10, 2022, at 6:00 AM through August 12, 2022, at 11:59 PM. An additional maintenance period is tentatively scheduled for November 2-4.

Status of activities:

ITEMS REQUIRING USER ACTION:

• None expected on research clusters

ITEMS NOT REQUIRING USER ACTION:

• [Complete][ICE only][System] PACE-ICE and COC-ICE instructional clusters will receive an operating system upgrade to RHEL7.9, to match the research clusters. Visit our documentation for a guide on potential impacts. A testflight environment is not available for ICE.
• [Postponed][Phoenix, Hive][Open OnDemand] Deploy R 8.3 on Open OnDemand
• [In progress][Phoenix][Storage] multiple upgrades to Lustre project and scratch storage
• [Complete][Hive][Storage] replace cable connecting GPFS project and scratch storage
• [Complete][Network] Upgrade interfaces to 100 GbE on Globus Vapor endpoint and border storage
• [Complete][Network] Add redundant 100GbE switch to storage servers, increasing capacity
• [Complete][System] Install operating system patches
• [Complete][System] Update operating system on administrative servers
• [Complete][Network] Move BCDC DNS appliance to new IP address
• [Complete][Hive][System] Upgrade cuda and Nvidia drivers on Hive to match other clusters with cuda 11.5
• [Complete][System] Remove unused nouveau graphics kernel from GPU nodes
• [Complete][Network] Set static IP addresses on schedulers to improve reliability
• [Complete][Datacenter] Cooling loop maintenance
• [Complete][Datacenter] Georgia Power Microgrid testing

If you have any questions or concerns, please contact us at pace-support@oit.gatech.edu.

 

 

 

[Detailed announcement 5/3/22]

As previously announced, our next PACE maintenance period is scheduled to begin at 6:00 AM on Wednesday, May 11, and end at 11:59 PM on Friday, May 13. As usual, jobs that request durations that would extend into the maintenance period will be held by the scheduler to run after maintenance is complete. During the maintenance window, access to all PACE-managed computational and storage resources will be unavailable. This includes Phoenix, Hive, Firebird, PACE-ICE, COC-ICE, and Buzzard.

Tentative list of activities:

ITEMS REQUIRING USER ACTION:

• None expected on research clusters

ITEMS NOT REQUIRING USER ACTION:

• [ICE only][System] PACE-ICE and COC-ICE instructional clusters will receive an operating system upgrade to RHEL7.9, to match the research clusters. Visit our documentation for a guide on potential impacts. A testflight environment is not available for ICE.
• [Phoenix, Hive][Open OnDemand] Deploy R 8.3 on Open OnDemand
• [Phoenix][Storage] multiple upgrades to Lustre project and scratch storage
• [Hive][Storage] replace cable connecting GPFS project and scratch storage
• [Network] Upgrade interfaces to 100 GbE on Globus Vapor endpoint and border storage
• [Network] Add redundant 100GbE switch to storage servers, increasing capacity
• [System] Install operating system patches
• [System] Update operating system on administrative servers
• [Network] Move BCDC DNS appliance to new IP address
• [Hive][System] Upgrade cuda and Nvidia drivers on Hive to match other clusters with cuda 11.5
• [System] Remove unused nouveau graphics kernel from GPU nodes
• [Network] Set static IP addresses on schedulers to improve reliability
• [Datacenter] Cooling loop maintenance
• [Datacenter] Georgia Power Microgrid testing

If you have any questions or concerns, please contact us at pace-support@oit.gatech.edu.

[Early announcement]

Dear PACE Users,

This is friendly reminder that our next Maintenance period is scheduled to begin at 6:00AM on Wednesday, 05/11/2022, and it is tentatively scheduled to conclude by 11:59PM on Friday, 05/13/2022. As usual, jobs with resource requests that would be running during the Maintenance Period will be held until after the maintenance by the scheduler. During the Maintenance Period, access to all the PACE managed computational and storage resources will be unavailable.

If you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact us at pace-support@oit.gatech.edu.

Best,

The PACE Team

[Update 4/27/22 5:45 PM]

The remaining headnode has been repaired, and service is restored. Thank you for your patience.

[Original Post 4/27/22 5:20 PM]

Summary: A storage server issue made headnodes for two projects on Firebird inaccessible. One has been recovered, while repairs are in progress on the second one.

Details: The storage server housing two Firebird projects had an NFS issue earlier today. The login nodes were impacted. The PACE team has repaired one project’s login node and is currently repairing the second that has a more complex issue.

Impact: Researchers on impacted projects are/were not able to log into Firebird today. Running jobs were not impacted, as only the login node is/was affected.

We apologize for the disruption. Please email us at pace-support@oit.gatech.edu with any questions.

[Update 6/6/22 11:20 AM]

Summary: Revised plans for OIT’s network disaster recovery test remove all expected impact to PACE.

Details: Changes in the disaster recovery test mean that we no longer expect PACE to have any impact this weekend, and all PACE clusters should operate normally, including OnDemand and other PACE services. Campus license servers should also remain reachable from PACE. For additional details about the disaster recovery scope, please see https://oit.gatech.edu/recoveryexercisejun22.

Impact: We have removed the scheduler reservations on all PACE clusters, so longer jobs that have been held can now begin. No impact is expected.

Please contact us at pace-support@oit.gatech.edu with any questions or concerns. 

[Update 5/24/22 10:00 AM]

Summary: Updated information lessens impact to Hive and introduces new partial impact to Firebird during disaster recovery testing (June 10-13).

Details: As additional details about the disaster recovery testing have been clarified, we have determined that Hive can remain in production throughout the testing with limited disruptions, which will also impact Firebird. We will remove the reservation currently in place on Hive for these dates.

Impact:

• Phoenix, PACE-ICE, and COC-ICE will be disabled from 5:00 PM on Friday, June 10, through the morning of Monday, June 13.
• Hive and Firebird will remain in production, but some services will be unavailable for much of the weekend:
  • Hive OnDemand will be unavailable.
  • PACE license servers will be unavailable. Intel compilers will not be usable, so no code can be compiled with Intel compilers, though previously-compiled binaries can be executed.
  • License servers from the College of Engineering, providing access to MATLAB, Ansys, Abaqus, and Comsol for the entire campus, will not be reachable. Any batch or interactive jobs that attempt to check out a license for these applications will fail. Researchers are encouraged to avoid such jobs just before the outage and to wait until it is complete before submitting them.
  • A number of PACE utilities, such as pace-quota and pace-check-queue, will not function.
  • Other intermittent disruptions are possible.
• Buzzard will not be impacted.

Thank you for your understanding and cooperation during this campus network testing. Please contact us at pace-support@oit.gatech.edu with any questions or concerns. 

 

[Original announcement 4/27/22 11:45 AM]

Summary: Campus network disaster recovery testing will disable Phoenix, Hive, PACE-ICE, and COC-ICE from 5:00 PM on Friday, June 10, through 12:00 noon on Monday, June 13.  

Details: In accordance with USG security requirements, OIT will be conducting disaster recovery testing on the Georgia Tech campus network during the weekend of June 11, which will close access to most of PACE’s clusters as well as some other campus resources.  PACE’s Phoenix, Hive, PACE-ICE, and COC-ICE clusters will be impacted. Firebird and Buzzard will remain in production.  

Impact: PACE will set a reservation to prevent any jobs from running during the downtime. You will not be able to log in, access your data, nor run jobs during the outage.  

Longer jobs will be held until the testing is complete if their walltime request will not lead the job to conclude before the outage, just as they are during quarterly maintenance periods. Researchers who run long jobs should note the duration between PACE’s May maintenance period (May 11-13) and the testing period, beginning June 10. In particular, Hive researchers who submit 30-day jobs to the hive-nvme, hive-sas, or hive-nvme-sas queues should note that any 30-day job submitted after April 12 will not begin until at least June 13. Researchers are encouraged to submit jobs with reduced walltimes whenever feasible to make use of the cluster between maintenance and disaster recovery testing.  

Thank you for your understanding and cooperation during this campus network testing. Please contact us at pace-support@oit.gatech.edu with any questions or concerns. 

Dear Campus Champion Community,

We are pleased to announce the official release of the Hive Gateway at Georgia Tech’s Partnership for an Advanced Computing Environment (PACE) to the Campus Champion community. The Hive gateway is powered by Apache Airavata, and provides access to a portion of the Hive cluster at GT that is an NSF MRI funded supercomputer that delivers nearly 1 Linpack petaflops of computing power.  For more hardware details see the following link: https://docs.pace.gatech.edu/hive/resources/.

The Hive Gateway is available to *any* XSEDE researcher via federated login (i.e., CILogon), and has a variety of applications available including Abinit, Psi4, NAMD, a python environment with Tensorflow and Keras installed, among others.

Hive Gateway is accessible via https://gateway.hive.pace.gatech.edu

Our user guide is available at: https://docs.pace.gatech.edu/hiveGateway/gettingStarted/ and contains details on the process of getting access.  Briefly, to get access to the Hive gateway, go to “Log In” on the site, select XSEDE credentials via CILogon, which should allow you to log into the gateway and generate a request to our team to approve your gateway access and enable job submissions on the resource.

Please feel free to stop by the Hive gateway site, try it out, and/or direct your researchers to it.

Cheers!

– The PACE Team

Dear PACE Researchers, 

We are pleased to announce the official release of the Open OnDemand (OOD) portal for PACE’s Phoenix and Hive clusters! OOD portal allows you to access PACE compute resources through your browser, and OOD provides a seamless interface for several different interactive applications, including Jupyter, Matlab, and a general interactive desktop environment. Each PACE cluster has its own portal, allowing access to all your data as usual with the Web interface. 

In-depth documentation on OOD at PACE is available at https://docs.pace.gatech.edu/ood/guide, and links to the portal for each PACE cluster are listed below: 

• Phoenix cluster: Phoenix OnDemand 
• Hive cluster: Hive OnDemand 

Please note that you will need to be on the GT VPN in order to access the OOD portals.

Thursday’s PACE clusters orientation will feature a demo using OOD. To register for upcoming PACE clusters orientation, visit https://b.gatech.edu/3w6ifqO.  

Please direct any questions about Open OnDemand to our ticketing system via email to pace-support@oit.gatech.edu or by filling out a help request form.  

Cheers! 

– The PACE Team 

Summary: The Phoenix scheduler became nonresponsive overnight and was restored at approximately 9:00 AM today.

Details: Last night, the Phoenix scheduler became nonresponsive, likely shortly after midnight. The PACE team restarted the scheduler and restored its function just before 9:00 this morning.

Impact: Commands such as “qsub” and “qstat” would not have worked, so new jobs could not be submitted early this morning. Running jobs were not interrupted.

Thank you for your patience early this morning. Please contact us at pace-support@oit.gatech.edu with any questions.

Summary: Hive project & scratch storage cable replacement and potential for an outage

Details: A cable connecting the Hive GPFS device, hosting project (data) and scratch storage, to one of its controllers needs to be replaced, beginning around 10:00 AM Tuesday (April 12).

Impact: Since there is a redundant controller, no impact is expected. However, a similar previous replacement caused storage to become unavailable, so this is a possibility. If the redundant controller fails, your job may fail or run without making progress. If you have such a job, please cancel it and resubmit it once storage availability is restored. PACE will monitor Hive GPFS storage throughout this procedure. In the event of a loss of availability occurs, we will update you.

If you have any questions or concerns, please direct them to pace-support@oit.gatech.edu.