Thursday, January 28, 2021 at 4:53 pm

CORRECTION:

The maintenance window for April will be APR 20-21

Thursday, January 28, 2021 at 12:31 pm

Amarel Users,

In an effort [to] avoid long, intensive maintenance periods, we are shifting to a regular monthly maintenance schedule.

The new schedule is a tentative schedule with 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.

Here is the anticipated maintenance schedule for the next 12 months:

FEB 16-17
MAR 16-17
APR 13-14
MAY 18-19
JUN 15-16
JUL 20-21
AUG 17-18
SEP 21-22
OCT 19-20
NOV 16-17
DEC 21-22 (may be shifted 1 week earlier)
JAN 18-19 (may be shifted 1 week earlier)

Maintenance is usually scheduled for weekdays because it often involves coordination with University facilities teams or external vendors.

Please note: there may 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).

Let me know if you have questions.

Galen

Galen Collier, PhD
Director, Research Support
Office of Advanced Research Computing (OARC)