Major Betzy upgrade: phase 1 from 2024-06-24 08:00 CEST to 2024-07-12 18:00 CEST

This maintenance has been concluded as planned.

We are starting to put back some more nodes into production. It will now be possible to run larger jobs. We will gradually phase inn more nodes during the next few hours and days.

Hi,

We are still working on Betzy upgrade which is taking longer than expected.

For now, Betzy is running with a limited capacity and it should increase to its full capacity within the next two weeks. This means some nodes are reserved for maintenance and jobs will take longer to start.

As soon as we have more news to share, as well as more information regarding the increase in Betzy’s capacity, we will update everyone on the opslog page: https://opslog.sigma2.no/

We apologize for any inconvenience it may have caused.

This maintenance has been concluded as planned.

This maintenance is now starting as planned.

The operating system (OS) on Betzy will be upgraded and the process is planned to be executed in two phases:

1. Upgrade of the base systems
2. Compute and login nodes

The main reason is that the current OS is very old, and soon will not receive any more security updates. We will also upgrade the queue system (Slurm).

Note that the software available via “module load” will be reinstalled and only toolchain 2022a and newer (the four latest versions) will be supported when the upgrade is completed. If you use software older than this, it would be a good idea to start using newer versions now, if possible. Please also note that there might be some software packages that will not be reinstalled by the time Betzy goes into production again. They will be handled as soon as possible.

Upgrade of the base systems
The first phase will start on June 24th and is expected to finish during the second week of July. After this first upgrade, users shouldn’t have issues with their current scripts as modules will remain the same.

Compute and login nodes
The second phase is schedule to happen in August (exact date to be disclosed in a future message) and the impact will be higher. The planned downtime is two weeks and all the nodes on Betzy will be upgraded with the new software. Again, only 2022a toolchain and newer will be supported.

Also note that the ssh keys on Betzy login nodes will change. We will document the new key fingerprints when we open up after the upgrade.

When the upgrade is done, Betzy will still run the same “flavour” of Linux (RedHat) as now, so you should be able to work mostly as you do today. But there will be commands and things that have changed or work differently, so you will probably have to do some changes.