File system replacement

Content

Starting September 2024, the underlying hardware of Lise’s global file systems HOME and WORK will be replaced. This affects all login nodes and all compute partitions. Please be aware of the following activities.

  • One-week downtime for maintenance, preparation steps, and for preliminary transfer of HOME data. NHR@ZIB staff copies all data from the old to the new HOME storage. No user action is required.

  • One-day maintenance of the entire system for a final synchronization step between old and new HOME. Old HOME goes offline, new HOME goes online. No user action is required.

  • Two-month Migration phase for WORK. During this period, both the old and new WORK file systems are available. Users transfer their data from the old to the new WORK storage.

Schedule

step

estimated start date

subject

status

step

estimated start date

subject

status

1

September 30

one-week downtime of the GPU clusters (A100 and PVC), CPU CLX cluster remains available

2

End of November

one-day maintenance for all compute systems

3

End of November

two-month migration phase for users to copy their data from the old to the new WORK storage

completed

open

Migration phase for WORK

In step 3 of the schedule, data migration for WORK will be organized as follows.

Active migration phase:

  • a two-month period starting in October

  • simultaneous user access to the old and new WORK file systems

  • data transfer by users from the old to the new WORK storage (no data transfer by NHR@ZIB staff)

Post migration phase:

  • only the new WORK file system is available

  • the old WORK file system is switched off, its data is deleted

Remarks

WORK is a scratch file system - that means, no backups are available! Data can get lost any time, due to user mistakes or due to system failures. Users need to copy important data (job results) to a safe place.

WORK is a file system shared by all users. It is important that only data actively used in computations (“hot” data) reside here. WORK is not intended to store backups, software installations, and other kinds of “cold” data.

The PERM file system is not affected by this maintenance. During all times of Lise operation, PERM will be available to each user.