High Performance Computing Systems Upgrade 2019 Announcement

UPDATE: This work has been delayed. Dates indicated below are no longer accurate and will be corrected in a later announcement

The operating system used on all High Performance Computing (Gizmo, Rhino, etc) will reach end-of-life later this spring. As a result, Scientific Computing will need to upgrade the operating system on all High Performance Computing servers used at Fred Hutch this spring.

Note: the current operating system has been in use for over three years.

For this upgrade we plan to use a phased approach that will not require taking the entire computing environment offline at once. Instead it will allow for continual use of the computing environment while it is upgraded.

Upgrade Schedule

• Testing Phase: 3/1 - 4/1/2019:
  • Test cluster is available to try out new computing environment
  • This will be the best time to try out your workflow and tools in the new computing environment
  • SciComp will be available to advise, assist, and help with this process
• Transition Phase: 4/1 - 5/1/2019:
  • High Performance Computing servers transitioned to new computing environment
  • Rhino and NoMachine servers converted to new computing environment
  • 85% of Gizmo’s compute capacity converted to new computing environment
  • Beagle and Koshu converted to new computing environment
• Cleanup Phase: 6/1 - 7/1/2019:
  • Scientific Computing staff will work with anyone still using old compute environment and assist to transition to new compute environment

What will be changing

During this upgrade we will be upgrading the operating system used on each server to Ubuntu 18.04LTS. There will be no change to the hardware currently used in our HPC environment or change in the computing capacity.

This operating system upgrade requires that we rebuild the tools in the /app file system on the new OS using a new toolchain. At this time, we don’t know the full extent of the changes required at this time. Additional information will be provided as this work proceeds.

Future Communications

Throughout this upgrade Scientific Computing staff will send announcements, additional technical details and schedule updates via the scicomp_announce mailing list and the Scientific Computing Announcements page on SciWiki. Scientific Computing staff will also hold weekly open houses where you can come and run your jobs on the new operating system. If any problems are found, we will be on-hand to help you update your jobs and get them working.

As always, please email us at scicomp at fhcrc.org with any questions and concerns.

Additional Technical Detail

Additional information will be added here shortly