ICHEC mail #32

Posted: 2007-03-01

Dear ICHEC users,

Contents:

1. Maintenance session (downtime)
2. Changes in scheduling policies (Walton)
3. Feedback sought for the creation of a Users Council

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1 – Maintenance session
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A scheduled downtime will take place on Monday (05-03-2007) at 10:30am. This is to facilitate the following:

- Hardware and software maintenance on Walton.
- A major operating system and software update on Hamilton.
- A network downtime to facilitate a router software update.

The work on Walton will take less than 10 hours. Due to the major updates on Hamilton it will be inaccessible for a period of 72 hours. The network downtime will take place between 11:00 and 12:00 on Monday during which time access to the ICHEC e-mail, web and access grid facilities will be unavailable.

See the ICHEC systems status page for up-to-date information.

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2 – Changes in scheduling policies (walton)
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We have recently created a new queue to improve the throughput of short production jobs. This queue is called "ShortQ", and will accept jobs of size 8 to 32 CPUs, with a maximum run time of 24 hours.

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3 – Feedback sought for the creation of a Users Council
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Feedback is invited for the creation of an independent ICHEC Users Council to be put in place in April 07. Feedback is to be sent by E-mail to JC Desplat, no later than 23rd March.