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• June - August 2024

  Public

  • Power supply units for 324 nodes require replacement. Replacement PSU sourcing has experienced significant delays.

• September 2024

  • Replacement PSUs arrive

• October 2024

  • Expected public access to Phoenix. Date The exact date to be determined

FAQ:

• Why is this happening?

  • The Agave supercomputer is being moved to Iron Mountain, to be adjacent to Sol. With this move, Agave will be upgraded to include the same software stack as Sol, its back-end networking will be revamped for additional redundancy, and the /scratch file system will be rebuilt.

• When will this happen?

  • This migration will occur throughout 2023 and 2024, starting in July 2023. ASU Research Computing will provide an “Agave-to-Phoenix Research Computing” communication campaign for more information and updates. 

• How will this impact me?

  • Capacity on the Agave supercomputer will gradually diminish as systems are migrated over to the Iron Mountain Data Center, where they will be incorporated into the new Phoenix supercomputer. 

  • Once all computing systems have been migrated, the Agave /scratch directory will be deleted in preparation for an optimized rebuild of the file system.

  • ASU Research Computing anticipates having all computing systems moved and the /scratch system ready for decommissioning by May 13, 2024. 

  • After this date, all computing and data capacity from Agave will be rebuilt as the Phoenix supercomputer, and the Agave system will no longer be available.

• What are my options? 

  • Get an account to the Sol supercomputer.

  • Use the Phoenix supercomputer once available. 

  • Remain on Agave until it is taken offline and then migrate to Phoenix or Sol.

• How will Phoenix be different from Agave?

  • Location: The Phoenix system will be hosted off-campus in the Iron Mountain Data Center, which has more resilient power and cooling systems than ISTB1. 

  • Operating System: The newest Rocky operating system, Rocky Linux 8, will replace the end-of-life CentOS 7 operating system.

  • Scratch: The /scratch filesystem and its supporting metadata servers will be upgraded for better reliability and performance.

  • Network: To properly integrate with the new Phoenix supercomputer network, your nodes may need newer Infiniband network cards. ASU Research Computing will cover the costs of any necessary network card upgrades.

  • Software: Modules on the Phoenix supercomputer will be named and managed similarly to how they are on the Sol supercomputer.

  • Hardware: The Sol supercomputer will continue to be a homogeneous system consisting of a select few types of nodes. Phoenix will continue to be a heterogeneous system consisting of a wide variety of CPUs and GPUs. 

• What about my data on Agave?

  • All data in the /home and /data directories on Agave will remain available during this transition. No action is required at this time for data on the /home and /data directories. 

  • Once all computing capacity has been migrated into the Phoenix supercomputer, data in the Agave /scratch directory will be deleted to allow the filesystem to be rebuilt for better performance and stability. 

• What about my data on /scratch?

  • All data on /scratch will be deleted by May 13, 2024. This data needs to be moved in order to be preserved. Please see this guide for how to easily move your data from the /scratch filesystem to the Sol supercomputer.

• What do I need to do in preparation for this migration?

  • Get an account on the Sol supercomputer. 

  • See this new user guide on using Sol. 

  • /wiki/spaces/RC/pages/1807384577

  • See this document on transferring files to and from the Sol.

  • Come to office hours for additional assistance. 

  • Join ASU Research Computing for their monthly Beginner’s Guide to Research Computing workshops. 

  • Join ASU Research Computing for data transfer workshops.

• For how long will Agave be available?

  • Agave will be intermittently available starting July 2023 and compute capacity will gradually diminish until Agave’s availability is disabled on May 13, 2024. 

  • An “Agave-to-Phoenix Research Computing” communication campaign will also be provided for more information and updates.  

• When will Agave be available?

  • Agave will no longer be available after May 13, 2024. 

• When will Phoenix be available?

  • The Agave to Phoenix transition will start in the fall of 2023 and the Phoenix supercomputer will be publicly available in the spring of 2024. ASU Research Computing anticipates the Agave to Phoenix transition to be complete by the summer fall of 2024 due to power issues.

For Owners of Private Partitions on Agave:

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