June 2024

Date: Tuesday, July 2, 2024 (06:00-17:00)

Who is affected:
All users of the CS Department Beowulf high performance computing cluster,
known as ionic.

All users of the CS Staff-managed public login systems, including the
cycles, courselab, and armlab systems.

What is happening:
During this window, all CS managed systems (cycles, ionic, neuronic,
courselab and armlab) will be upgraded to the latest Red Hat Operating
System – 9.4. In addition, cluster management and job scheduling system
slurm and its database will be upgraded. No data loss is anticipated.

SPECIAL NOTE:
As we are reloading the Linux servers, all crontabs will be deleted. If you
have crontabs that you wish to persist, you will need to back up your
crontabs before the downtime, and restore them after.

In addition, all local disk storage will be wiped, thus resulting in a loss
of any data stored in the /scratch partition. If you have data in /scratch
that needs to survive the reload, please ensure it is copied somewhere safe
before the start of the maintenance.

Why is it happening:
This is part of regular maintenance to keep systems up-to-date.

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