What are maintenances?

An outage where jobs are prevented from being scheduled while system-wide updates and improvements are implemented.

Why are maintenances important?

Supercomputers are a complex arrangement of dozens of hardware and software components. As issues arise with updates in firmware, OS patches, and software that affect security, performance, and compatibility improvements, the systems may need to be updated all at once. These maintenance outages are scheduled with Researchers in mind and during some at least one of our supercomputers will
remain available to preserve continuity.

How are maintenances decided?

Research Computing understands that these maintenances are impactful to our faculty's and researchers' work. However, these maintenances are critical to keeping the supercomputers operational. To mitigate the impact these maintenances have on our community, we first identify which dates we feel will cause the least impact. We then approve these maintenances through our governance board.

How are maintenances communicated?

We communicate these maintenances through the following communication channels:

• our maintenance schedule page

• our web portals and login prompts  

• our #rc-support Slack channel 

• our user mailing list with a three-week announcement and a one-week reminder

My work cannot wait for maintenance to complete. What options do I have?

Currently, ASU Research Computing is managing both the Phoenix and Sol supercomputers and deliberately avoids scheduling maintenance on both systems at once. Researchers who can run workloads on both systems can therefore mitigate the impact of a maintenance. Another option is to run on NSF supported systems. After creating an account, startup allocations on these systems are straightforward for academic researchers to obtain. Furthermore, ASU RC participates in the Campus Champions program, which empowers local facilitation for NSF resources, such as sharing allocations.

We understand that these measures may not alleviate all frustrations, and we welcome any suggestions from our community for further improving our processes. Your feedback is invaluable in helping us better serve our community and ensure a smoother experience for all users.

Please feel free to reach out if you have any questions or concerns. We are here to support you throughout this process.

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