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.

On Saturday 23rd at 03:00 CEST we will also update the login nodes of Hydra and Anansi. During this upgrade, access to the clusters will be unavailable to users for approximately 30 minutes. All user sessions on the login nodes will be disconnected, but running jobs will not be impacted.

This update of the operating system brings the compute nodes to the most recent version of Rocky Linux, including all current security updates and new versions of low-level drivers for the storage, network and GPUs. In addition to the OS upgrade, Slurm will also receive a minor upgrade with several fixes and some improvements to the job scheduler. There will be no changes to your job scripts or how you use the cluster.

These operations are part of the regular updates to keep VUB-HPC infrastructure modern and up to current standards. Please contact us at VUB-HPC Support if you have any comments or questions about these changes.