ITaP research computers to be down during building upgrades
What’s happening?
ITaP’s research computing systems will be shut down beginning at 3 a.m. Tuesday, March 29. The Coates and Rossmann cluster supercomputers could be off through 6 p.m. Thursday, March 31.
Why?
An outage related to an ongoing power and cooling upgrade at the Mathematical Sciences Building will cut all power to the building from 5 to 5:30 a.m. March 29. ITaP will bring systems back on line after power is restored — except for the Coates and Rossmann clusters.
Why no Coates and Rossmann?
Related work on the chilled water system for Mathematical Sciences means cooling will be insufficient to handle Coates and Rossmann. The chilled water project is to take place over March 29-31. Coates and Rossmann could be back in operation by close of business March 31, as soon as the space has cooled sufficiently.
Is anything else affected?
The Steele cluster supercomputer located in a remote location on campus, smaller ITaP research computing systems in Mann Hall in Discovery Park and in the Engineering Administration Building, and the supercomputer at Purdue Calumet, called Miner, also will be affected because they’re tied into central data storage in Mathematical Sciences. The ITaP-run student computer lab in Room B10 and datacenter space ITaP makes available to some campus units in Room B60 will be affected as well. Everything should be back up after the morning outage March 29.
What about email?
Only the research computing-related systems, as well as office and lab computers in Mathematical Sciences, should be affected. (All power will be out in the building between 5 and 5:30 a.m. March 29, so nothing electrical will work, including lights and elevators.) Student computer labs elsewhere, Purdue email, OnePurdue and other ITaP-managed services are located in different buildings and should function normally.
Will it be over by March 31?
The construction project also necessitates outages at Mathematical Sciences during the weekends of Aug. 6-7 and Aug. 13-14. Details are pending, but research computing systems might have to run in limited production mode Aug. 8-12 between the outages. Systems should run normally between the March and August outages.
What’s the payoff?
The project, funded by a $2 million National Science Foundation grant to upgrade and improve Purdue’s main research datacenter, should allow three new supercomputers to be installed. It also provides for redundant power to help avoid unscheduled outages.