PACE A Partnership for an Advanced Computing Environment

Dear Researchers,

The GT network team will undertake an emergency code upgrade on the departmental Palo Alto firewalls beginning at 8pm tonight.  Because this is a high availability pair of devices, this upgrade should not be a major disruption to any traffic to or from the PACE systems.  The specific upgrade has already been successfully accomplished on other firewall devices of the same hardware and software versions and it was observed to not cause any disruptions.

With that said, there is a possibility that connections to the PACE login servers may see a temporary interruption between 8pm and 11pm TONIGHT as the firewalls are upgraded. This should not impact any running jobs except if there is a request for a license on a license server elsewhere on campus (e.g., abaqus) that happens to coincide with the exact moment of the firewall changeover.  Additionally, there is possibility that users may experience interruptions during their interactive sessions (e.g., edit session, screen, VNC Job, Jupyter notebook).  The batch jobs that are already scheduled and/or running on the clusters should otherwise progress normally.

Please check the status and completion of your jobs that have run this evening for any unexpected errors and re-submit should you believe an interruption was the cause.  We apologize in advance for any inconvenience this required emergency code upgrade may cause.

You may follow the status of this maintenance at GT’s status page

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

Best,

The PACE Team

[RESOLVED] We have restored functionality to the RHEL7 dedicated scheduler. Thank you for your patience.

[UPDATE] The RHEL7 dedicated scheduler, accessed via login7-d, is again down. We are actively working to resolve the issue at this time, and we will update you when the scheduler is restored. Please follow the same blog post (https://blog.pace.gatech.edu/?p=6715) for updates. If you have any questions, please contact pace-support@oit.gatech.edu.

[RESOLVED] We have rebooted the RHEL7 Dedicated scheduler, and functionality has been restored. Thank you for your patience.

[ORIGINAL MESSAGE] Roughly 30 minutes ago we determined an issue with the scheduler for dedicated RHEL7 clusters; this scheduler is responsible for all jobs submitted from the dedicated RHEL7 headnode, login7-d. All other schedulers are operating as expected. We are actively working to resolve the problem, but in the meantime you will be unable to submit new jobs or query the status of queued or running jobs.

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

[UPDATE – 03/19/2020]

Dear Researchers,

This is brief update on our prior communication about COVID-19 situation that we are carefully monitoring.  In the light of recent communication from the Office of the Executive Vice President for Research regarding the research ramp down plan, please rest assured that PACE will continue normal operations of our resources.   We will continue to provide support during this period.  

Regarding PACE training classes, we made modifications to our classes to offer them virtually via BlueJeans, and this week we had our first two classes, Linux 101 and Optimization 101, hosted virtually.  Please visit our training site for upcoming classes that you may register for, and our Research Scientists will be in touch regarding the instructions in accessing the classes virtually.   Additionally, our consulting sessions will be offered virtually as scheduled.  You may check our “Upcoming Events” section for the virtual coordinates for upcoming consulting session.

Also, as a clarification point about the new campus VPN (Global Protect), this is a new service that is in early deployment/testing phase, and the new VPN is NOT replacing the current campus VPN (i.e., Cisco’s AnyConnect). At this time, they are operating in parallel, and you may use either of the VPN services to connect to PACE resources.

Overall, given the challenges that COVID-19 has presented, we want to reassure our community that we are here for you to support your computational research, and please do not hesitate to contact us at pace-support@oit.gatech.edu if you have any questions or concerns.

Warm regards, and stay safe.

The PACE Team

[UPDATE – 03/13/2020].  As a brief update to yesterday’s message, the new VPN (GlobalProtect) is a new service (and going through much of the testing).  This new VPN is intended to help with the anticipated increase in demand, but it is NOT replacing the current campus VPN (i.e., Cisco’s AnyConnect you’ve been using).  At this time, they are operating in parallel, and you may use either of the VPN services to connect to PACE resources.

[Original Message – 03/12/2020]

Dear Researchers,

PACE is carefully monitoring developments with the COVID-19 situation including the recent message from President Cabrera announcing that GT is moving to online/distance instruction after spring break.  We want to reassure the community that PACE will continue normal operations.

Given the anticipated increase in demand of our VPN infrastructure, please follow the instructions on accessing OIT’s recently deployed Next Generation Campus VPN that will help you access PACE resources.

If you have any questions or concerns, you may reach us via pace-support@oit.gatech.edu

Best,

The PACE Team