Note: The following email was sent to each Phase 1 owner individually and included specifics of their Amarel Phase 1 hardware acquisition. Not all information below applies to each owner.)

Dear [Phase 1 owner],

The Office of Advanced Research Computing is grateful to count you among the earliest adopters of a centralized, university-wide research compute, data, storage, and network system which has supported innovative research across all Rutgers campuses and many diverse disciplines in its short lifespan.

Your Amarel Phase 1 compute nodes and storage are set to expire in July 2021, when their four-year warranty reaches the end of its life. I am reaching out now to gauge your interest in refreshing the X node(s) and (X)TB /project storage that you purchased in Phase 1 with the next generation of Amarel equipment, Phase 5, which will be available in 2021. Pricing for Phase 5 is currently being negotiated with vendors, but is expected to remain comparable to Phase 4, which was $7,200/node and $150/TB storage.

In addition to your Phase 1 purchase of (X) node and (X)TB storage, you also own (X) Phase 2 (or other Phase) node but (no) additional /project storage from later purchases. Your subsequent equipment will remain active until its own expiration date(s), whether you renew your Phase 1 equipment or not.

Should you decide not to renew node ownership your /home directory(s) will remain intact and your accounts will transition to open access.  Any unexpired /project storage will remain available.  Please review https://oarc.rutgers.edu/resources/amarel/ if you have questions regarding the differences between Amarel ownership and Amarel open access privileges.

Since you own a Phase 2 node, you may decide to renew your storage only, if you wish. However, if you choose not to renew, the quota for your /projects space will be reduced to 0TB. Your data will remain readable to enable moving it somewhere else if you become over-quota when your /projects storage is reduced. If you choose not to retain any /projects storage ownership, your data will remain in-place and readable for 90 days to enable moving those data elsewhere. After that, any remaining data must be purged to create space for new /projects storage ownership. 

At your convenience, please respond to let me know whether to count you in our Phase 5 purchase, or if we should begin working together to prepare to move your data elsewhere in the coming months.

It is our pleasure to work with you and your team, and we look forward to continuing our partnership. Thank you!

– Kristin

Kristin Lepping, MLIS
Director, Business Operations, Grants, & Workforce Development
Office of Advanced Research Computing