Amarel monthly maintenance
Our vision is to provide a better user environment, with rolling updates affecting one portion of the cluster at a time, instead of a whole system. We strive to perform maintenance in less active periods so that classes and grants are minimally affected.

In January 2021, in an effort to avoid long, intensive maintenance periods, OARC shifted to a regular monthly maintenance schedule.

We will continue this, with the tentative schedule listed below of maintenance spanning up to 2 days each month, starting on the 3rd Tuesday of the month. We may not need the full 2 days each month, but we’ll reserve that time in case it is needed. Otherwise, the cluster will be returned to service early, immediately after the planned maintenance is complete. When possible, we will skip a month’s maintenance window entirely.

Each maintenance period is expected to begin at about 08:00 ET on the first day and end by about 19:00 ET on the 2nd day.

2023 anticipated maintenance schedule (all dates subject to change):
JAN 24 & 25 (one week later because of MLK Day and first day of Spring semester)
FEB 21 & 22
MAR 14 & 15 (one week earlier because of Spring Break)
APR 18 & 19
MAY 16 & 17
JUN 20 & 21
JUL 18 & 19 (PEARC23 conference will be held 7/23-7/27)
AUG 15 & 16
SEP 19 & 20
OCT 17 & 18
NOV 21 & 22 (most likely canceled)
DEC 19 & 20

Maintenance is usually scheduled for weekdays because it often involves coordination with University facilities teams or external vendors. There may also be times when Amarel must be unavailable due to externally-scheduled data center facilities, power, or telecommunications maintenance. When this happens, we will do our best to avoid adding to a month’s downtime with our own maintenance work (e.g., by working in parallel or postponing some tasks).