VUB HPC clusters move to Research Park Zellik#

Hydra and Anansi will move to the data center in the Research Park Zellik in the week of September 7th. The cluster will be fully shutdown on Monday September 7th at midnight and it will re-open to users a week later, on Monday September 14th.

During this period, it will not be possible to connect to Hydra or Anansi and jobs will not run. This restriction includes the following services:

  • SSH connections through the terminal interface

  • OnDemand sessions through portal.hpc.vub.be

  • Remote sessions with tunneling such as VS Code applications

  • Globus collection VSC VUB Hydra

We are currently taking backups of the scratch storage in Hydra prior to the move. These special backups will guarantee that there is no data loss even if some hardware would be physically damaged in the process.

The storage system for VSC_HOME and VSC_DATA is partially affected by this move. This storage is not moving but needs to be reconfigured. Hence, there will be a disconnection of VSC_HOME and VSC_DATA from Monday September 7th at 10:00 (CEST) until 15:00 (CEST). During this period, users will not be able to login to any VSC cluster on other sites.

Users urgently needing compute time during the move can use the UGent Tier-2 systems as those are the most similar to ours. Check out the VSC documentation on how to access them.

The last 5 days before the move, only jobs that can end before September 7th at 00:00 (CEST) will start. Jobs left in the queue before the move will be kept in queue and will automatically start once the move is finished and the cluster is back online.

The change of location from the data center room in building G of Etterbeek campus to a modern data center such as Penta Infra BRU01 will bring improved infrastructure at all levels. Greener and more stable power supply, more efficient cooling and better security. Hydra and Anansi will not share the space of the VSC Tier-1 cluster sofia though, they will be placed in a different room exclusively used by VUB alongside other systems of the university.

Once the move starts we will publish regular updates on this website informing about the progress of the operation. Stay tuned!

If you have any questions or concerns about the move, please contact VUB-HPC Support.