[Snic-users] Triolith, Gamma, Tetralith, Sigma status update

[Mats Kronberg]

Dear Triolith and Gamma users,

Regarding the current maintenance window for Triolith and Gamma: it is
taking us a little longer than expected to perform the storage system
changes needed for Tetralith/Sigma, so we will probably not return
Triolith and Gamma to service until late tomorrow or Monday.

Unfortunately, we must also shut down Triolith, Gamma and all other
systems in one of our computer rooms on Thursday (August 16th) next
week, starting at 11:00 CEST. The estimated duration for this work is
2-4 hours. This is needed to perform urgent repairs to an electrical
subcentral in the computer room. The failure was discovered only a few
days ago and it was not possible to perform the repair this week.
Until we repair it, we can only run half of the Tetralith and Sigma
compute nodes.

We still believe it will be possible to open Tetralith and Sigma to
users next week. It will probably not happen before the Thursday
outage, but possibly immediately after it. It's also possible there
will be a short delay (days, not weeks), but there are no major
ongoing problems that would suggest a long (weeks, months) delay.

When we are ready to let users in to Tetralith and Sigma, we will send
out information via email on how to get an account, log in, where to
find documentation etc. There will be no pilot test period as such,
all projects will be given access at the same time (since
Tetralith/Sigma was originally scheduled to be available July 1st we
feel it's important to give everyone access as soon as possible).

Triolith allocations have been scaled such that 1/3 of Tetralith phase
one is allocated to projects allocated time in the Large scale 2017
autumn allocation round, 1/3 to projects allocated time in the Large
scale spring 2018 allocation round and 1/3 to projects allocated
Medium scale time. Small scale projects will have the same allocation
as on Triolith.

We have also been able to adjust the project plan so that we can offer
you a longer overlap period where both Triolith/Gamma and
Tetralith/Sigma will be available. Our current plan is to run Triolith
and Gamma until approximately September 20th, which means there will
be five weeks overlap if we manage to open Tetralith next week.

--
Mats Kronberg, NSC Support <support at nsc.liu.se>