Posted on

Fram, NIRD and Service Platform scheduled downtime starting on 21st November 2018

UPDATE:

  • 2018-11-23 09:45:
    • We plan to re-open access to Fram during today. Will keep you updated.
    • We are currently running benchmarks and tests on the upgraded system.
    • Cooling units are stress-tested now to pinpoint any outstanding issues.
    • OpenMPI is upgraded now.
  • 2018-11-22 22:48:
    • Lustre servers are upgraded on Fram and several tests, benchmarks were run to fine tune parameters.
    • First step of the CDU maintenance is carried out now.
  • 2018-11-22 11:33:
    • NIRD Service Platform is up again.
    • Access to NIRD is reopened. Please note that we have now four login nodes and SSH fingerprint is changed.
  • 2018-11-21 18:41:
    • Needed hardware replacement for NIRD was carried out and all firmware upgrades are finalized on both Tromsø and Trondheim site storage systems.
    • NIRD file systems are started back now and we plan to reopen access tomorrow before noon.
    • Firmware is updated now on the Fram storage system.
    • Several other updates, including the OpenFabrics stack and Lustre, were done in parallel.
  • 2018-11-21 08:00: Maintenance has started.

Dear Fram, NIRD and Service Platform User,

On the 21st and 22nd of November we will have a scheduled maintenance on Fram, NIRD and Service Platform.

This will be a comprehensive maintenance on the national HPC and research data infrastructure, ongoing on multiple levels and sites. Due to it’s complexity and amount of work involved, some parts of the infrastructure might require downtime extension for the 23rd of November, too.

The work will include, but will not be limited to:

– firmware upgrades on disks, enclosures, chassis, etc.

– operative system upgrades

– queue system upgrade

– file system upgrades

– kernel upgrades

– upgrade of OpenMPI

– upgrades on the OpenFabrics stack

– maintenance on the cooling system units

 

Our aim is to enhance the stability and security of the infrastructure, eliminate bugs and enhance performance, while having the shortest downtime possible.

We understand that system unavailability has big impact on your daily work and such we try to bring back our systems functional as soon as possible.

 

Thank you for your consideration!

Metacenter Operations

Posted on

NIRD and Service Platform downtime

UPDATE

2018-11-12:11:55:  Login node and services are back into production.

2018-11-12 10:20: Disk pool raid sets were rebuilt until Saturday, but a set of drives failed once again. A new rebuild was ongoing and we had to reset IO card and power cycle the storage today. At this point all is up and functional on the storage side and file system is up. We are currently switching back geo-replication and expect to reopen access around 12:00 PM today. Will keep you posted.

2018-11-09 13:59: The firmware is now applied without any problem. However we still need to wait for a rebuild to finish. The time estimate for the rebuild is 12 hours left. We will open the system for regular use as soon as we can.

2018-11-09 12:45: Most of the rebuilds are ready and we are currently patching the firmware on the disk enclosures. If all goes well, we expect to have NIRD up and functional during the day today. Will keep you updated.

2018-11-08 13:27: The firmware update is running. We have to wait for rebuild of broken drives before we can upgrade the enclosures and finnish up the emergency maintenance.  We don’t expect the rebuild to be finished before tomorrow (friday november 9th). Hence the system in whole will not be available before tomorrow.

We are very sorry any inconvenience this may cause.

Posted on

Emergency Stop of Fram, NIRD and the Service Platform

Update:

  • 2018-11-07 16:36: We will have to upgrade firmware on all the storage enclosures in NIRD and rebuild the failed volumes. Will keep you updated and reopen access to NIRD and Service Platform as soon as emergency maintenance is ready.
  • 2018-11-07 14:53: User home directories were migrated over to /cluster/home and Fram is starting back again. We will soon re-open access to Fram. Please note that NIRD project areas will _not_ be available until NIRD is up again.

 

Due to disk failures on NIRD, we have to shut down Fram, NIRD and the Service Platform immediately to avoid losing user data.  This means stopping all jobs and user processes, and logging users out of the systems.

We will try to copy the home directories from NIRD to Fram to be able to start up Fram again without needing to mount NIRD. If this is successful, we will be able to start up Fram again, hopefully later today.  (Note that the NIRD project areas will _not_ be available until NIRD is up again.)

We will update this post with more information when we know more.

Posted on

new NIRD login node

We have put in place a second NIRD login node.

This node is accessible at

login1.nird.sigma2.no

Report problems to support@metacenter.no.

Posted on

Planned maintenance on 12th of June

Update

  • 2018-06-12 17:16 Access it NIRD is reopened now.
  • 2018-06-12 16:05 Service are started and back in production on NIRD Service Platform.
  • 2018-06-12 15:55 Queue reservation is now removed and jobs are running on part of Fram. Rest of the nodes will be added back to the queue as soon as they are updated.
  • 2018-06-12 14:55 Access is re-opened to Fram. Queue reservation is still in place.
  • 2018-06-12 08:34 Maintenance has started.

Dear Fram and NIRD user,

We will have a one day planned maintenance on 12th of June starting from 08:30 AM.
Fram, NIRD and the Service Platform will be affected. One storage enclosure must be replaced, needing downtime for the file systems served from NIRD.

There is a system reservation in place on Fram starting on 12.06.2018 08:45 AM. Jobs not being able to finish before the maintenance window, will be left pending in the queue with a Reason “ReqNodeNotAvail” and will be started when the maintenance is over.

We will keep you updated via OpsLog/Twitter.

Thank you for your consideration!
Metacenter Operations

Posted on

EasyDMP is in production!

Dear NIRD Users,

It is with great excitement that we in UNINETT Sigma2 hereby announce the launch of the easyDMP, a new service that offers researchers, with minimal experience in data management, a simple way of creating a Data Management Plan (DMP). This is achieved by transforming any funding agency’s or institution’s data management guidelines and policies into a series of easy to answer questions, many containing a simple list of canned answers to pick from. The resulting plan can be used as a blueprint for researchers to put in place the necessary elements that ensure their data are adequately managed. The plan can be edited and shared, and also duplicated to serve as a starting point for other datasets.

EasyDMP is free of charge and available to any researcher in Norway and in Europe:

https://easydmp.sigma2.no/

EasyDMP has been developed and is operated by Sigma2 in collaboration with the EUDAT2020 project. EasyDMP presently implements the EU H2020 recommendations, but the service has been design to easily integrate other schemas, for example institutional specific recommendations. Please do not hesitate to contact us if you want to integrate the easyDMP with your own tailored DMP questionnaire scheme.

Improvements to the tool will be driven by your needs. Thanks to the continuous deployment method, the easyDMP service will be adding new functionalities continuously. We can already anticipate that the next release will have functionality that enables other services to make use of the plan output in compliance with the FAIR principles.

We are now working to establish an external reference group for the service, that will include experts from user communities, librarians and curators and national service providers. This because we really believe that the easyDMP service will benefit from a wide national pool of competence and stakeholders.

Please do feel free to test it and start using it, and please do not hesitate to give us feedback at (support @easydmp.sigma2.no).

More info about easyDMP here:
https://www.sigma2.no/content/easydmp

Posted on

2 days downtime starting on 25th of April

Update:

  • 2018-04-30 14:46 File system issues are solved now on Fram and access is reopened. Jobs are temporarily on hold due to some troubles with the cooling system in the server room. As soon as that is sorted out, jobs will be permitted again.
  • 2018-04-30 10:15 We are still struggling with the /cluster file system. The problem is escalated to the Vendor. At the moment we do not have a time estimate when Fram is back online, but there is work in progress to fix this as soon as possible, hopefully during the day.
  • 2018-04-27 18:44 Unfortunately there are still problems taking up the Lustre file system on Fram. Issue is caused by an incompatibility hitting routing between IB networks/fabrics on the Lustre object storage servers. The vendor is now planning and working to carry out an emergency update on the system. We are sorry for the trouble.
  • 2018-04-27 16:49 Access to NIRD is reopened now.
  • 2018-04-26 22:50 We are having problems on taking up the Lustre file system on Fram. The issue is reported to the vendor. Additionally, there are some minor issues which must be addressed on NIRD before opening it for production, but we expect reopening the access to both Fram and NIRD during tomorrow.

 

Dear Fram and NIRD user,

A two day downtime is scheduled for week 17. The scheduled maintenance will start on Wednesday, 25th of April, at 09:00 AM and will affect Fram, NIRD and the Service Platform.

During this time we will:
1. Extend NIRD storage space with ~1.1PB.
– The new hardware will be coupled to NIRD and extra disks loaded to the system during these two days.
– Please note that the above advertised storage will not be available at once. Storage space is gradually added as soon as loaded disks are formatted and available to the file system.
– One of our top priorities is to address the inode shortage on $HOME areas.
2. Address file system related bugs on NIRD by upgrading the afferent software and tune some parameters on the servers.
3. Fix broken hardware on Fram.
4. Apply any outstanding patches to both Fram and NIRD.
5. Carry out maintenance work on the cooling system for Fram.

There is a job reservation in place on Fram starting on 08:45 AM 25th of April.  Jobs that cannot complete before that time, will be left pending in the queue with a Reason “ReqNodeNotAvail” and an estimated start time of 2154.  They will be started when the maintenance is over.

We will keep you updated via OpsLog/Twitter.

Thank you for your consideration!
Metacenter Operations