[Vagnekman-users] Re: Information about Ekman service windows during the next two to three weeks

[lama at pdc.kth.se]

Hello again,

adding a few lines of information.

  [..]

>    Hi Ekman users
>    A new information update regarding the CPU replacement:
>    The current status of the upgrade is as follows:
>    a) Replacement of the current AMD Opteron 2354 CPUs with AMD Opteron
>    2374HE
>        230 nodes upgraded (see below)
>    b) Upgrade the OS version of the nodes from CentOS 5.2 to CentOS 5.3
>        Finished.
>    c) Update of all relevant firmware.
>        Finished.
>    d) Replace /cfs/testscratch with a new access path for the
>    cluster-wide scratch filesystem (more details will follow).
>        Finished - the new accesspath is: /cfs/ekmanscratch
>                        /cfs/testscratch will be available as a link to
>    /cfs/ekmanscratch for a month or two _but it will be
>                        removed_   so please start updating your scripts.

The path /cfs/ekmanscratch now also is usable on the log-in-node,
ekman.pdc.kth.se as well. We are sorry for the confusion.

e) Jobs requesting 7days or less are eligible to start. We will
   impose restrictions to avoid collisions between jobs and nodes
   scheduled for hardware maintenance.

>    Due to delays in delivery of the CPUs the update schedule will be
>    revised as follows:
>    All replacements will be carried out between 17/8 and 21/8. We will
>    make an effort to keep as many nodes as we can available during the
>    upgrade but there may be as few as about 230 nodes available during
>    that period (these 230 nodes were upgraded the last week).
>    Also - Please note that from now until all nodes has been updated
>    Ekman will contain nodes with two different CPU's. We expect the
>    performance difference to be very small but you should still be aware
>    that there may be some. If you want to know the cpu version on the
>    node you are running on you can always do:
>    grep "model name" /proc/cpuinfo | sort --unique
>    Regards,
>    Daniel Ahlin
>    PDC

Best regards,
lars/pdc-staff.