ARC Fall Updates

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jkro...@vt.edu

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Sep 15, 2021, 12:14:47 PM9/15/21
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ARC Users,
Please see below for updates on the following:
  • ARC User Meeting (10/1)
  • Fall Office Hours
  • Storage Troubles and Future Plans
  • Systems Announcements (New resources, Huckleberry end-of-life)
  • Functionality Enhancements (Matlab, VSCode, and more)
  • Virginia Women in HPC - Inaugural Event (10/6)
  • Links for new users
  • How to ask for assistance

ARC User Meeting: Friday, October 1, 11am
At 11:00am on Friday, October 1, ARC will have a (virtual) meeting open to all members of the ARC user community (faculty, staff, students, researchers). We will facilitate more detailed discussion of the subjects covered in this email (storage plans, new resources, etc) and be available to address questions and hear general feedback. A Zoom link will be sent out closer to the meeting date.


Fall Office Hours: 1-2pm (typically)
For the fall semester, ARC office hours will typically be held from 1-2pm. However, changes or cancellations due to conflicts do happen, so please be sure to check the calendar before making plans to attend: https://arc.vt.edu/office-hours/


Storage Troubles and Future Plans
  • Our BeeGFS file system, which provides /projects and /work to TinkerCliffs and Infer has been unstable. ARC system engineers have been working with vendors continuously since the start of 2021 to investigate the problems, but vendors have been unable to identify a root cause or solution. To mitigate this, we have begun the process of acquiring a replacement, with a strong emphasis on stability. However, the process of delivery and deployment will likely take us well into the fall semester.
  • On TinkerCliffs, we also have a VAST storage system that can serve as an alternative to /projects and /work in some cases. Please contact us if you would like more information.
  • The GPFS system that provides /groups and /work on our older systems is quite old and will be retired after the new storage system is online and data has been transferred. Please be on the lookout for communications from ARC about transition plans and data retention policies. Please also recall that /work was never intended as permanent storage and be prepared to transition any data in /work that you want to keep to /projects under the new storage system.

Systems announcements (New resources, Timelines for End-of-Life)
  • As announced earlier this summer, ARC added four nodes to TinkerCliffs, each equipped with eight A100 GPUs, adding 32 leading-edge GPUs that should serve as excellent accelerators for demanding AI/ML and HPC workloads. See the TinkerCliffs documentation for more information: https://arc.vt.edu/tinkercliffs/
  • A new Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) system is on site and being configured. This new cluster+storage system has dedicated CPU and powerful GPU-based computational resources and performant storage for projects with an appropriate technology control plan (TCP) for research involving export-controlled sensitive data or software. The tentative timeline for availability to users is the end of the fall semester but is contingent on outside approvals and thus subject to change. Please let us know if you are interested in using this resource once it becomes available.
  • ARC has been authorized to acquire both a new GPU resource and a Kubernetes cluster in this fiscal year. If you have feedback on the kinds of GPU resources or Kubernetes applications you would like to see in the next ARC cluster, please send us a note!
  • ARC has been authorized to acquire a replacement for the aging, tape-based ARCHIVE file system. In the coming months we will send further information regarding data migration plans and future usage parameters for data archival. This presents an opportunity to review your archival needs and strategies. Consult with a computational scientist.
  • Huckleberry is nearing the end of support and has been largely superseded by acquisitions of newer GPU resources in recent years and will be retired in Spring of 2022. 

Functionality Enhancements
  • Matlab job submission: With MathWorks’ help, job submission from within Matlab has been enabled on TinkerCliffs and Infer. See the new documentation here: https://arc.vt.edu/job-submission-within-matlab/
  • New additions to OnDemand: https://ood.arc.vt.edu/
    • Matlab in a browser: Also with MathWorks’ help, a browser-based interface for Matlab has been made available via OnDemand, making it much easier to use the graphical interface on ARC resources.
    • IDEs: Dev where you work! Apps for VS Code, Eclipse, and Nvidia-Nsight have been added under the IDE menu.
    • Other new additions: AMDuProf (profiler for TinkerCliffs), qGIS, DeepLabCut, and more!
  • Please submit a request if there is additional software you would like to see in OnDemand.

Virginia Women in HPC - Inaugural Event, October 6, 2021
 
We are proud to announce the founding of Virginia's first Women in High-Performance Computing (WHPC) program. Join Virginia WHPC for its inaugural event featuring inspiring lightning talks by female faculty of the Commonwealth sharing and discussing how HPC has facilitated their scientific research and professional careers. This virtual event is jointly hosted by Virginia Commonwealth University, George Mason University, Virginia Tech, William & Mary, University of Richmond, and Research Computing at the University of Virginia. Virginia WHPC is committed to increasing diversity and inclusion by promoting and encouraging the participation of women in high-performance computing and related fields. Interested in upcoming WHPC events or getting involved in promoting diversity in high-performance computing? Subscribe to our mailing list at https://lists.virginia.edu/sympa/subscribe/whpc-virginia


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