To support increasing research activities, to improve our capacity for large and complex data sets, and to grow our HPC cluster to meet demand, we are relocating our cluster to a new data centre which meets our growing requirements as a university. During the relocation there will be an extended downtime of Apocrita, which whilst we understand will be inconvenient, it is the only option to ensure we can continue to support our growing research activity.
Downtime will commence at 1pm on Monday 7 April, with the move taking place on Tuesday 8 April. During this time, you will not be able to access Apoctria/Andrena data, globus, ondemand, login to the cluster or run jobs.
How long will the downtime last?
Due to the scale of this relocation, we anticipate the process could take a week before we have confidence in the stability of our systems, which could mean up until Tuesday 15 April.
In the event of failure or damage to a critical part of the system, we may need longer to complete the relocation. If required, updates will be posted on the ITS Research Slack channel and via the ITS Research mailing list
Please note, the support ticket system will remain online, as will the on-premises Github Enterprise.
What will happen with my jobs/data?
To ensure jobs are completed before the relocation, by Friday 28 March, only jobs requesting less than a runtime of 10 days will have a chance of completing. We recommend you run any jobs you need as early as possible.
All being well, any queued jobs that have not started before the shutdown, should still be in the queue to run after the service is moved.
We advise that you retrieve copies of vital data that you may need access to during the downtime as you will not be able to access this during the downtime.
We apologies for any inconvenience caused, but we do hope that this relocation will allow us to continue to support Queen Mary’s research efficiently and effectively.
Please bear with us whilst we work through the relocation. We will post updates on the ITS Research Slack channel and via the ITS Research mailing list. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact its-research-consultants@qmul.ac.uk.
