VUB Scientific Data & Compute#
Message of the Day
22/05/2026 - System update rollout on VUB-HPC clusters
We are updating the operating system and Slurm scheduler on Hydra, Anansi and sofia with the latest security and bug fixes. The rollout will start on Friday May 22nd at 14:00 CEST and will be gradually carried out on all VUB-HPC clusters in the following days. This operation has a minimal impact on our users: compute capacity will be slightly lower during the update, but there will be no downtime of the clusters and all job queues will remain operational.
Quick Reference Guide#
This quick reference guide offers structured, concise information for the daily use of our Tier-2 HPC clusters and Pixiu, our Research Data storage platform. The compute section covers best practices for using the HPC clusters, serving all levels of expertise, from VSC account creation to software optimization tips. It also acts as an entry point to the comprehensive resources available on the VSC documentation website.
Recent News#
22/05 - System update rollout on VUB-HPC clusters
We are updating the operating system and Slurm scheduler on Hydra, Anansi and sofia with the latest security and bug fixes. The rollout will start on Friday May 22nd at 14:00 CEST and will be gradually carried out on all VUB-HPC clusters in the following days. This operation has a minimal impact on our users: compute capacity will be slightly lower during the update, but there will be no downtime of the clusters and all job queues will remain operational.
12/05 - 19 May 2026: Online information session for Tier-1 project applications
We are organizing an online information session for VUB users interested in submitting a Tier-1 project application. It takes place online on 19 May at 14:00. Everyone is welcome to join the session via Microsoft Teams using the following link: https://teams.microsoft.com/meet/342738294056735?p=zJOKmdywWZdBwyIZwM
05/05 - Scheduled maintenance of VSC account page
On Monday May 11, scheduled maintenance will be carried out on the VSC account infrastructure starting at 07:00 CEST. The expected duration of the maintenance is approximately 1–2 hours.
30/04 - VSC Link briefly down on 6 May
Due to a scheduled migration of the VSC link, connectivity between VUB-HPC and other VSC hubs will be temporarily suspended on 6 May between 9:00 and 10:00. This should not take longer than a few minutes. Jobs running on your home institution clusters are unaffected. Jobs running on remote VSC clusters will also continue to run, unless they require access to $VSC_DATA or $VSC_HOME.
29/04 - Hydra and Sofia security shutdown
10:30 CEST: Access to VSC web services and updates to hpc.vub.be are fully restored. These services have been unavailable for the past two days as the authentication infrastructure behind them required downtime to fully recover from this security vulnerability.
Latest Events#
Hydra Surveys and Stats#
Once a year we do a review of the usage of the cluster in the previous year. We carry out a user survey to gather feedback about your experience in our HPC clusters and collect usage data to analyse user activity on the clusters themselves.
The questions of the survey cover the full cycle of cluster usage, from getting access to the specific infrastructure needs of experienced users. The goal is to identify the weak and strong points in our scientific computing services as guidance for improvement in the future.
Our Overview for 2025 shows a very good satisfaction level of our users with the services provided by the SDC team. It also sheds light on some challenges and interesting trends for the future of the cluster.
All published reviews can be found in the survey list.