This year, the cluster will undergo a major hardware and software upgrade, described below.
Important notice
We remind you that we do not perform backups of your data under any circumstances. Users are encouraged to regularly transfer their data from the cluster to their own storage resources and to delete from the cluster data that is no longer useful for calculations. This is valid in all circumstances and we decline any responsibility for your files on the cluster.
Operations Schedule
The dates below are subject to change slightly.
- From February 17, 2025 and all spring: software updates, including OS, drivers, Slurm and some modules. The impact on users will be almost zero except:
- Around March 3, 2025: expect 3 or 4 days of disruption related to the update of storage systems in particular. So no access to your data, no calculation possible. Emails will be sent to warn you.
After the software updates, please note that:
- The NFS (/home) will have storage limits (to be defined). The NFS should not be used for computations (frequent read/write on files). This impacts the cluster performance. Please use your /workspace folder instead. The /workspace will still have no storage limits. Affected users (with too many files on the NFS) will be contacted in a separate e-mail.
- As drivers will be updated, codes compiled using module “openmpi/4.1.2” may have to be re-compiled using a new module that will be available in March.
This summer, the cluster will move from its current location at Inria Sophia Antipolis to the new machine room on the Valrose campus.
- July 4, 2025: Cluster shutdown. No more access to your data, no calculation possible.
- July 7-18, 2025: Moving the existing cluster, adding new hardware and reinstalling it. Total unavailability of the cluster.
- July 21 to August 1, 2025: Configuration of new hardware. Disruptions are also expected in access to existing facilities.
- August 1, 2025: Expected commissioning of the entire cluster.
New hardware in summer 2025
In July 2025, the following hardware will be added to the existing one:
35 PowerEdge R6625 machines for CPU computing, each equipped with:
- 2 AMD EPYC 9124 processors, 3 GHz with 16 cores (= 32 cores per machine)
- 384 GB RAM
3 PowerEdge R760XA machines for GPU computing, each equipped with:
- 4 NVIDIA H100 NVL cards, PCIe, 350 W-400 W, 94 GB
- 2 Intel Xeon Gold 5420+ 2 GHz processors with 28 cores (= 56 cores per machine)
- 512 GB RAM
The memory of the existing SMP machine will be increased to 1.5 TB.
The BeeGFS storage will be doubled to 480 TB.