PACE A Partnership for an Advanced Computing Environment

[Update 11/5/19]

We would like to remind you that PACE’s maintenance period begins tomorrow. This quarterly maintenance period is planned for three days and will start on Thursday, November 7, and go through Saturday, November 9.  As usual, jobs with long walltimes will be held by the scheduler to ensure that no active jobs will be running when systems are powered off. These jobs will be released as soon as the maintenance activities are complete.

These activities will be performed:
ITEM REQUIRING USER ACTION:
– Anaconda Distributions have started to use a year.month scheme, starting from late last year (https://www.anaconda.com/anaconda-distribution-2018-12-released/). This is easier for all users of PACE to track; accordingly, all PACE resources will now adopt the same convention in the use of anaconda2/2019.10 and anaconda3/2019.10 modules across all PACE resources. Defaults for Anaconda will now be set to the latest YYYY.MM. Therefore, the anaconda module files for “latest” will be removed, to avoid ambiguities. However, software installations that rely on “latest” will still be retained to preserve any critical user workflows. Users currently loading an Anaconda module ending in “latest” should modify their commands to reference a specific version of Anaconda (or just load the default without a version specified  – e.g., “module load anaconda3”). Please email PACE Support if you need help in accessing older versions of Anaconda that are no longer available via the modules system or in updating your scripts.

ITEMS NOT REQUIRING USER ACTION:
– (Completed) Scheduler settings will be modified to improve the scheduler’s ability to handle large numbers of job submissions rapidly. These changes, along with the new policy implemented last week (10/29/19) limiting simultaneous job submissions (https://blog.pace.gatech.edu/?p=6550), will help stabilize the shared scheduler (accessed via login-s[X] headnodes) and make it more reliable. These scheduler settings are already implemented on the Hive cluster.
– (Completed) PBSTools, which records user job submissions, will be upgraded.
– (Completed) Upgrades to routers and network connections for PACE in Rich and Hive in Coda will be made in order to improve high-speed data transfer.
– (Completed) [Hive cluster] Infiniband switch firmware will be upgraded.
– (Completed) [Hive cluster] Storage system firmware will be updated.
– (Completed) [Hive cluster] Subnet managers will be reconfigured for better redundancy.
– (Completed) [Hive cluster] Lmod, the environment module system, will be updated to a newer version.
– (Completed) The athena-6 queue will be upgraded to RHEL7.

If you have any questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to contact us at pace-support@oit.gatech.edu . You can follow our Maintenance blog post at https://blog.pace.gatech.edu/?p=6614.

[Update 11/1/19]

We would like to remind you that we are preparing for PACE’s next quarterly maintenance days on November 7-9, 2019. This maintenance period is planned for three days and will start on Thursday, November 7, and go through Saturday, November 9.  As usual, jobs with long walltimes will be held by the scheduler to ensure that no active jobs will be running when systems are powered off. These jobs will be released as soon as the maintenance activities are complete.

We are still finalizing planned activities for the maintenance period. Here is a current list:

ITEM REQUIRING USER ACTION:

– Anaconda Distributions have started to use a year.month scheme, starting from late last year (https://www.anaconda.com/anaconda-distribution-2018-12-released/). This is easier for all users of PACE to track; accordingly, all PACE resources will now adopt the same convention in the use of anaconda2/2019.10 and anaconda3/2019.10 modules across all PACE resources. Defaults for Anaconda will now be set to the latest YYYY.MM. Therefore, the anaconda module files for “latest” will be removed, to avoid ambiguities. However, software installations that rely on “latest” will still be retained to preserve any critical user workflows. Users currently loading an Anaconda module ending in “latest” should modify their commands to reference a specific version of Anaconda (or just load the default without a version specified  – e.g., “module load anaconda3”). Please email PACE Support if you need help in accessing older versions of Anaconda that are no longer available via the modules system or in updating your scripts.

ITEMS NOT REQUIRING USER ACTION:

– Scheduler settings will be modified to improve the scheduler’s ability to handle large numbers of job submissions rapidly. These changes, along with the new policy being implemented on Tuesday (10/29/19) limiting simultaneous job submissions (https://blog.pace.gatech.edu/?p=6550), will help stabilize the shared scheduler (accessed via login-s[X] headnodes) and make it more reliable. These scheduler settings are already implemented on the Hive cluster.

– RHEL7 clusters will receive critical patches.

– Updates will be made to PACE databases and configurations.

– PBSTools, which records user job submissions, will be upgraded.

– Upgrades to routers and network connections for PACE in Rich and Hive in Coda will be made in order to improve high-speed data transfer.

– [Hive cluster] Infiniband switch firmware will be upgraded.

– [Hive cluster] Storage system software will be updated. – [Hive cluster] Subnet managers will be reconfigured for better redundancy.

– [Hive cluster] Lmod, the environment module system, will be updated to a newer version.

If you have any questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to contact us at pace-support@oit.gatech.edu . You can follow our Maintenance blog post at https://blog.pace.gatech.edu/?p=6614.

[Original post]

We are preparing for PACE’s next maintenance days on November 7-9, 2019. This maintenance period is planned for three days and will start on Thursday, November 7, and go through Saturday, November 9.  As usual, jobs with long walltimes will be held by the scheduler to ensure that no active jobs will be running when systems are powered off. These jobs will be released as soon as the maintenance activities are complete.

We are still finalizing planned activities for the maintenance period. Here is a current list:
ITEM REQUIRING USER ACTION:
– Anaconda Distributions have started to use a year.month scheme, starting from late last year. This is easier for all users of PACE to track; accordingly, all PACE resources will now adopt the same convention in the use of anaconda2/2019.10 and anaconda3/2019.10 modules across all PACE resources. Defaults for Anaconda will now be set to the latest YYYY.MM. Therefore, the anaconda module files for “latest” will be removed, to avoid ambiguities. However, software installations that rely on “latest” will still be retained to preserve any critical user workflows. Users currently loading an Anaconda module ending in “latest” should modify their commands to reference a specific version of Anaconda (or just load the default without a version specified  – e.g., “module load anaconda3”). Please email PACE Support if you need help in accessing older versions of Anaconda that are no longer available via the modules system or in updating your scripts.

ITEMS NOT REQUIRING USER ACTION:
– Scheduler settings will be modified to improve the scheduler’s ability to handle large numbers of job submissions rapidly. These changes, along with the new policy being implemented on Tuesday (10/29/19) limiting simultaneous job submissions, will help stabilize the shared scheduler (accessed via login-s[X] headnodes) and make it more reliable. These scheduler settings are already implemented on the Hive cluster.
– RHEL7 clusters will receive critical patches.
– Updates will be made to PACE databases and configurations.
– Firmware for DDN storage will be updated.

– Upgrades to routers and network connections for PACE in Rich and Hive in Coda will be made in order to improve high-speed data transfer.
– [Hive cluster] Infiniband switch firmware will be upgraded.
– [Hive cluster] Subnet managers will be reconfigured for better redundancy.
– [Hive cluster] Lmod, the environment module system, will be updated to a newer version.

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

This is a friendly reminder that our updated policy impacting Shared Clusters at PACE will take effect on October 29, 2019.

On October 29, 2019, we are reducing the limit of number of queued/running jobs per user to 500.

Who is impacted? All researchers connecting to PACE resources via login-s[X].pace.gatech.edu headnode are impacted by this policy change (also, we have provided a list of impacted queues below).  We have identified all the researchers/users who are impacted by these changes, who were contacted on multiple occasions.   We have worked with a number of researchers from different PI groups during our consulting sessions in helping them adopt their workflows to the new max job per users limit.  PACE provides and supports  multiple solutions, such as, job arrays, GNU parallel and Launcher  that are in place to help users quickly adapt their workflows to this policy update.

• List of queues impacted are as follows: apurimac-6,apurimacforce-6,b5-6,b5-prv-6,b5force-6,bench-gpu,benchmark,biobot,biobotforce-6,biocluster-6,biocluster-gpu,bioforce-6,biohimem-6,casper,cee,ceeforce,chem-bigdata,chemprot,chemx,chemxforce,chowforce-6,cns-24c,cns-48c,cns-6-intel,cnsforce-6,coc,coc-force,critcel,critcel-burnup,critcel-manalo,critcel-prv,critcel-tmp,critcelforce-6,cygnus,cygnus-6,cygnus-hp,cygnus-hp-lrg-6,cygnus-hp-small,cygnus-xl,cygnus24-6,cygnus28,cygnus64-6,cygnusforce-6,cygnuspa-6,davenprtforce-6,dimer-6,dimerforce-6,ece,eceforce-6,enveomics-6,faceoff,faceoffforce-6,flamel,flamelforce,force-6,force-gpu,force-single-6,gaanam,gaanam-h,gaanamforce,gemini,ggate-6,gpu-eval,gpu-recent,habanero,habanero-gpu,hummus,hydraforce,hygene-6,hygeneforce-6,isabella,isabella-prv,isblforce-6,iw-shared-6,jangmse,joe,joe-6,joe-bigshort,joe-fast,joe-test,joeforce,kastella,kastellaforce-6,kokihorg,lfgroup,math-6,math-magma,mathforce-6,mayorlab_force-6,mcg-net,mcg-net-gpu,mcg-net_old,mday-test,medprintfrc-6,megatron-elite,megatronforce-6,metis,micro-largedata,microcluster,nvidia-gpu,optimus,optimusforce-6,phi-shared,prometforce-6,prometheus,pvh,pvhforce,radiance,romberg,rombergforce,sagan,sonar-6,sonarforce-6,spartacus,spartacusfrc-6,spinons,spinonsforce,threshold,threshold-6,tmlhpc,try-6,trybuy

Prior to this policy change taking effect on October 29,  we have one more consulting session that’s scheduled on:

• October 22, 1:00pm – 2:45pm, Molecular Sciences and Engineering Room 1201A

For details about our policy change , please visit our blog post.

Again, the changes listed above will take effect on October 29, 2019.  After October 29, users will not be able to submit more than 500 jobs.

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

OIT will be performing an Annual Preventative Maintenance for UPS units for Rich Data Center on Saturday, October 12, from 7:00AM – about 5:00PM.  No outage is expected from this work; however, in the case of an outage, PACE clusters and jobs running on them are at the risk of being interrupted.  Again, it is unlikely that we will have a power outage during this maintenance period.

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us at pace-support@oit.gatech.edu.

This morning we noticed that the Hive nodes were all marked offline. After a short investigation, it was discovered that there was an issue with configuration management, which we have since corrected. Ultimately, the impact from this should be negligible, as jobs that were running continued accordingly, while queued jobs were simply held until resources became available. After our correction, these jobs started as expected. Nonetheless, we want to ensure that the Hive cluster provides performance and reliability as expected, so if you find any problems in your workflow due to this minor hiccup, or for any problems you encounter moving forward, please do not hesitate to send an email to pace-support@oit.gatech.edu.