Posts by HPC Team
New command prompt in Hydra
- 23/01/2023
- news
We have updated the default command prompt in Hydra with a more informative and better looking one.
LUMI user course
- 13/01/2023
- news
On February 14-17 2023, the LUMI HPE Centre of Excellence (HPE CoE), AMD and the LUMI User Support Team organize a general LUMI course.
Hydra login nodes reboot
- 21/11/2022
- news
On Wednesday 23 November 2022 around 18:00 we’ll reboot the Hydra login nodes.
LUMI user training
- 07/11/2022
- news
On November 23 and 24 2022, HPE Center of Excellence and the LUMI User Support Team organize a hybrid training (Brussels & online) titled “Detailed introduction to the LUMI-C environment and architecture”. Information about the event, agenda, venue, travel and accommodation can be found here: https://www.lumi-supercomputer.eu/events/detailed-introduction-to-the-lumi-c-environment-and-architecture/.
Data snapshots of the scratch in Hydra
- 02/11/2022
- news
We are pleased to announce the immediate availability of data snapshots for the shared scratch storage of Hydra. Data snapshots save the state of your files and folders in the past, allowing to recover lost data from your account.
Bug fixes for GCC and OpenBLAS
- 24/10/2022
- news
On Monday October 24th 2022 we’ve reinstalled two key components in the foss/2021b and foss/2022a toolchains to fix two important bugs.
2022-fall on-site HPC Training Session
- 21/10/2022
- event
We are pleased to announce our next on-site HPC training session, in cooperation with the Vlaams Supercomputer Centrum (VSC).
VSC Lunch Session on OpenFOAM
- 14/09/2022
- news
On October 4th 2022, VSC is organizing a lunch session on the topic of “CFD meets HPC” (OpenFOAM).
New Globus endpoint for Hydra
- 22/08/2022
- news
We have a new Globus endpoint to access the storage of Hydra:
VSC VUB Hydra. The old endpoint has been removed.
Hydra storage down
- 11/08/2022
- news
13:00 The issues with the storage have been solved. Login to Hydra and all other VSC clusters is back to normal. Please check all jobs that were running when the storage issues started for errors, and resubmit if necessary.
More Ampere GPUs in Hydra
- 05/08/2022
- news
We are happy to announce the immediate availability of 2 more GPU nodes in
Hydra adding 4 new Nvidia A100 GPUs to the cluster. These new nodes are
joining the ampere_gpu partition and share the same CPU, memory and GPU
configuration with the other nodes in this partition.
Job monitoring and checkpoints
- 02/08/2022
- news
We have updated the documentation with new information on job monitoring,
restarting jobs from checkpoints and managing data between VSC_DATA and
VSC_SCRATCH in your jobs.
External network connection cut
- 30/06/2022
- news
23:00 The issues with the network have been solved and the connection of Hydra to external systems is back to normal.
Scheduled maintenance for Hydra in July
- 28/06/2022
- 04/07/2022
- news
15:00 All maintenance tasks have been completed ahead of time and the cluster is back online. The job queue is resumed and all users can now log in and submit new jobs.
Quota data synchronisation is now working again
- 03/06/2022
- news
Since the move of Hydra to the Pleinlaan campus, the synchronisation of quota usage to the VSC accountpage was not working. We have now been able to fix it.
Slow network connection to external systems
- 25/05/2022
- 26/05/2022
- news
10:00 The issues with the network have been solved and the connection of Hydra to external systems is back to full speed.
VSC Users Day 2022
- 11/05/2022
- news
The annual VSC Users Day is back! After two years of online gatherings, VSC Users Day 2022 will be live in Ghent on June 21st, 2022.
Hydra-VSC network failure
- 05/05/2022
- news
14:30 The firewall has been repaired, and the connections between Hydra and the other VSC clusters are again working.
Irregular low performance of Hydra’s new storage
- 21/04/2022
- news
16:00 We have pinned this issue down to a specific configuration of the
login nodes. Today, April 21st, at 21:00 (CEST) we will apply an urgent fix
to the login nodes that will increase the filesystem perfomance of
VSC_HOME and VSC_DATA back to normal levels. The login nodes will be
rebooted during the process and they will be unavailable for 10 min.
Hydra move to VUB Etterbeek campus completed
- 19/04/2022
- news
We are happy to announce that the move of Hydra to the new data center of VUB in Etterbeek campus is complete. The cluster is now back open to VSC users.
Kickoff of operation to move Hydra into campus
- 09/04/2022
- 19/04/2022
- news
The start of the operation to move the Hydra cluster to VUB Etterbeek campus is upon us. Hydra will be closed to access from Monday, April 11th at 00:00 (CEST). The move is planned to last 1 week. We will continue to be reachable at hpc@vub.be and we will communicate the progress of the move on this post.
User survey 2022
- 28/03/2022
- news
We have published the results of our yearly user survey, conducted in February 2022. Feedback from users’ experiences in Hydra adds valuable insight into their needs, what works well, and what needs further improvement.
Hydra power cut
- 20/03/2022
- 22/03/2022
- news
We’ve managed to get Hydra back to normal without data loss. The scheduler is running again and the login nodes are open. We’ve requeued all jobs that were running at the time of the power cut.
Hydra moves to VUB Etterbeek campus
- 17/03/2022
- news
Hydra will very soon move from ULB Solbosch campus to the recently upgraded VUB data center on the Etterbeek campus. This change will bring improved power supply, cooling and security measures to our HPC cluster. The move is scheduled in the week of April 11-15.
Multiple software packages updated in Hydra
- 03/03/2022
- news
The HPC team has been hard at work in the past month updating and testing many of the major software packages in Hydra. We invite all users to check these updates which include minor revisions of exiting versions with bug fixes and major new releases:
VUB-HPC user survey 2022
- 01/02/2022
- news
Please take some time (~10 minutes) to fill out the short user survey at https://hpc.vub.be/survey2022
VSC/CÉCI Workshop on Managing Workflows in HPC
- 27/01/2022
- news
On 15 and 16 February, VSC and CÉCI are organizing a free online 2-day workshop on the topic of managing workflows on HPC clusters.
GAMESS-US v2021-R2 available in Hydra
- 27/01/2022
- news
The most recent release of GAMESS-US with version 2021-R2-patch1 is now installed in Hydra.
Survey about trainings
- 17/01/2022
- news
VUB is participating in two big EU projects under the EuroHPC umbrella, the LUMI supercomputer project and the EuroCC project. LUMI will give you access to a new supercomputer infrastructure with large amounts of compute/storage/cloud resources (you will hear more about this soon), while EuroCC aims to foster the use of HPC in its broadest sense.
Tier-1 Info Session cutoff 1 2022
- 21/12/2021
- news
On 14 January 2022 at 12:30-13:30 VSC will organize an online Info Session on writing a Tier-1 project.
New GPU nodes in Hydra
- 16/12/2021
- news
We’re happy to announce that 6 new GPU nodes have been added to Hydra. They are equipped with the latest generation of NVIDIA GPUs: the Ampere A100.
AlphaFold 2.1.1 available in Hydra
- 15/12/2021
- news
We are pleased to announce the availability of AlphaFold v2.1.1 in Hydra. This recent release of AlphaFold has been installed for our top of the line Nvidia A100 GPUs with 40 GB of memory.
System update in Hydra
- 10/12/2021
- news
Warning We are carrying out a routine update of the operating system in Hydra. The nodes will be progressively updated without impacting running jobs, but queue times during the roll out might be longer.
2021-fall on-premise HPC Training Session
- 15/10/2021
- event
We are pleased to announce our next on-premise HPC training session, in cooperation with the Vlaams Supercomputer Centrum (VSC).
Slurm Q&A Sessions
- 04/10/2021
- event
We are pleased to announce the Q&A sessions for Slurm from the VUB-HPC team:
Migration of Hydra to Slurm
- 04/10/2021
- news
The HPC team is proud to announce one of the biggest improvements for Hydra in recent years and certainly one of the most impactful for its users. Hydra is replacing its job scheduler for the Slurm Workload Manager.
VSC Lunch Session on A.I.
- 17/09/2021
- news
On October 7th, VSC is launching its first Lunch Session on artificial intelligence, i.e. the ability of a machine to display human-like capabilities such as reasoning, learning, planning and creativity.
Update of the MPI stack in Hydra
- 15/09/2021
- news
The job scheduler in Hydra will be put on pause on Thursday, 16th September from 20:00 to 22:00. We will perform minor updates to the MPI stack in foss and intel toolchains. Running jobs will not be affected and users will be able to continue submitting jobs to the queue during the pause.
New documentation for SRA-Toolkit
- 24/08/2021
- news
We have added a section for SRA-Toolkit to our documentation. This new documentation extends the list of instructions for specific software, which already covers 14 different applications.
Migration of Globus accounts
- 23/07/2021
We are very soon going to migrate all VSC accounts from the old vub.ac.be domain to vub.be. This change impacts users that have already used Globus services. Data access in Globus will not be affected, but if you want to keep your existing bookmarks and personal endpoints in Globus, you need to take action as soon as possible.
Urgent system update in Hydra
- 22/07/2021
- 23/07/2021
- news
Login nodes updated successfully. The system update for the rest of the nodes continues as planned.
TensorFlow 2.5.0 is available in Hydra
- 19/07/2021
- news
The last stable version of TensorFlow is now installed in Hydra. You can load TensorFlow v2.5.0 with the following modules:
ORCA 5.0.0 is available in Hydra
- 07/07/2021
- 27/07/2021
- news
The recent major release of ORCA version 5.0.0 is now installed in Hydra. You can load it with the module ORCA/5.0.0-gompi-2021a.
CSC Autumn courses for LUMI
- 06/07/2021
- news
The national supercomputer centre of Finland (CSC) in collaboration with PRACE is planning a series of courses in Autumn to teach the necessary development skills for the future users of the upcoming LUMI supercomputer. The initial courses are mainly oriented to programmers, as LUMI is first and foremost a machine to explore exascale technologies and hence new software. Nonetheless, there will also be a course program for non-developer users once LUMI becomes online starting early next year.
Rolling system updates
- 14/06/2021
- news
Warning On Tuesday June 15 at 20:00 the login nodes will be unavailable for 30 minutes.
User survey 2021
- 28/04/2021
- news
We have published the results of our yearly user survey, conducted in February 2021. Feedback from users’ experiences in Hydra adds valuable insight into their needs, what works well, and what needs further improvement.
OneDrive Client in Hydra
- 26/04/2021
- news
We have improved the recommended usage of the OneDrive client in Hydra. Check the FAQ in the link below.
VSC Tier-1 Cloud Launch Event
- 20/04/2021
- 18/05/2021
- news
On May 20th 2021, VSC is launching its Tier-1 Cloud component and it’s a pleasure to invite you to this event!
2021-winter Online HPC Training Session
- 26/01/2021
- event
We are pleased to announce our next online HPC training session, in collaboration with the Vlaams Supercomputer Centrum (VSC).
New upcoming online trainings (Winter 2021)
- 25/01/2021
- news
The HPC team is pleased to announce that our next online training sessions on Linux and HPC will be held the 25-26 February 2021. These trainings are in collaboration with the Vlaams Supercomputer Centrum (VSC) and focus on young and/or early stage researchers (Doctoral students, Master thesis students).
2021-winter Online Linux Training Session
- 25/01/2021
- event
We are pleased to announce our next online Linux training session, in collaboration with the Vlaams Supercomputer Centrum (VSC).
Hydra storage maintenance scheduled on 26/11
- 25/11/2020
- 26/11/2020
- news
The maintenance on the storage is done and jobs are again running as normal. We are still busy with (automatically) updating all worker nodes. Until that is done, the queuing time will be slightly longer than normal.
2020-fall Online HPC Training Session
- 10/11/2020
- event
The HPC team of the VUB-ULB Shared ICT Services Centre (SISC) is pleased to announce its second installment of online training sessions on Linux and HPC of this year, in collaboration with the Vlaams Supercomputer Centrum (VSC)
New upcoming online trainings (Fall 2020)
- 09/11/2020
- news
The HPC team is pleased to announce our second installment of online training sessions on Linux and HPC of this year, in collaboration with the Vlaams Supercomputer Centrum (VSC), focusing on young and/or early stage researchers (Doctoral students, Master thesis students).
2020-fall Online Linux Training Session
- 09/11/2020
- event
The HPC team of the VUB-ULB Shared ICT Services Centre (SISC) is pleased to announce its second installment of online training sessions on Linux and HPC of this year, in collaboration with the Vlaams Supercomputer Centrum (VSC).
Hydra maintenance scheduled on 29/08
- 27/08/2020
- news
Due to maintenance work, it will not be possible to submit new jobs or view the status of submitted jobs on Saturday 29/8 between 20:00 and 23:00. Running jobs will not be impacted.
Preventive measures for second heatwave
- 03/08/2020
- 10/08/2020
- news
Warning Until next Friday (14th of August) IvyBridge nodes will be offline due to the current heatwave. All other nodes are online, including GPU nodes. Since the scope of this mesure is rather limited, the waiting time of jobs in the queue should not be affected.
PRACE online training on Parallel Programming
- 09/06/2020
- news
From 9 to 12 June 2020, the Flemish Supercomputing Center (VSC, Belgium) and SURFsara (The Netherlands) are organizing this online course on parallel programming using OpenMP and MPI. See [ONLINE] Parallel Programming with OpenMP and MPI @ VSC Belgium & SURFsara for more information.
Electricity works on the cooling system
- 02/06/2020
- news
From 2 to 3 June 2020, works on an electric board of the SISC cooling system will be conducted. The operations will require to stop the cooling system for short periods of time. The computing power of the HPC clusters Hydra and Vega will be reduced to a minimal level to avoid heat problems in the data center. Therefore, waiting time for jobs in the queue will be higher then normal.
Hydra security hardening
- 27/05/2020
- news
Due to the recent wave of cyberattacks on HPC centers throughout Europe, the SISC HPC team will take security hardening measures on Hydra, in consultation with the VSC.
Hydra storage maintenance scheduled on 18/05
- 11/05/2020
- news
There are a couple of hardware issues with the Hydra storage which we cannot safely fix while the cluster is running. We are going to shut down Hydra on Monday 18 May, starting at 09:00 to perform the needed repairs. We expect that we can resume normal operations by the late afternoon.
2020-spring Online HPC Training Session
- 30/04/2020
- event
The HPC team of the VUB-ULB Shared ICT Services Centre (SISC) is pleased to announce its first online HPC training session:
2020-spring Online Linux Training Session
- 29/04/2020
- event
The HPC team of the VUB-ULB Shared ICT Services Centre (SISC) is pleased to announce its first online HPC training session:
Hydra network maintenance scheduled on 20/04
- 16/04/2020
- 21/04/2020
- news
The network issues are fixed. Everything is back to normal.
Free Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs)
- 15/04/2020
- news
We’d like to advertise three free MOOCs organized by the Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe (PRACE):
Urgent reboot of Hydra login server
- 02/04/2020
- news
The login1 server has to be rebooted to apply critical updates. This will be done on Saturday at 20:00. You can use login2.hpc.vub.be as an alternative login server during the downtime.
2020-spring HPC Training Session
- 31/03/2020
- event
Due to the coronavirus outbreak we are forced to cancel the HPC training session of 31 March 2020. We hope to schedule a new date later on this academic year, possibly online. We’ll keep you informed.
2020-spring Linux Training Session
- 30/03/2020
- event
Due to the coronavirus outbreak we are forced to cancel the Linux training session of 30 March 2020. We hope to schedule a new date later on this academic year, possibly online. We’ll keep you informed.
VSC COVID-19 Action
- 23/03/2020
- news
Researchers working on COVID-19 can get free compute time on the Tier 1 and all Tier 2s of the VSC.
New upcoming training sessions (Spring 2020)
- 06/03/2020
- news
The HPC team is pleased to announce a new series of training sessions, in collaboration with the Vlaams Supercomputer Centrum (VSC) and the Consortium des Équipements de Calcul Intensif (CECI), focusing on young and/or early stage researchers (Doctoral students, Master thesis students). Full-day hands-on sessions are organized for both Linux and HPC.
Fixed node crashes caused by MPI jobs
- 17/02/2020
- news
We fixed an issue where a MPI job could crash an entire node.