August 2023

Date: Tuesday, August 29, 2023 (07:30-10:30)

Who is affected:
All users of CS Department storage systems, including project spaces, home
directories, and web spaces.

What is happening:
The central file storage cluster will be rebooted a few times during this
window in order to facilitate physical upgrades. During the reboots, file
services will be interrupted, but will resume after the cluster finishes
its boot. This will affect access to the cycles login hosts, CS Department
web services, and CS Department SMB/CIFS services. Email services should
not be affected.

Actual outage time is not expected to encompass the full 3 hour window, but
may occur sporadically during this period.

A reservation has been placed on the ionic cluster to hold all jobs that
would overlap with this maintenance. Jobs will automatically start again
after completion of the work.

Why is it happening:
The storage cluster will be upgraded during this window. The upgrades will
modernize the backend network of the cluster, as well as add new all-flash
nodes to speed up front-end operations.

This, combined with recent front-end network upgrades, will continue the
improvements to the cluster necessary to prepare for the arrival of the new
SEAS HPC cluster that will be hosted in CS.

We will post updates to the status page: www.csstaff.org
as necessary.

If this downtime will cause you undue hardship, please contact
csstaff@cs.princeton.edu immediately, so we can discuss options to reduce
any negative impact. Your patience is appreciated.

Sincerely,
CS Staff