Virginia Women in HPC - Student Lightning Talks: November 12, 2024

On November 12, 2024 from 1-2 p.m. EST, Virginia Women in High Performance Computing (VA-WHPC) will be hosting 8 students as they present research lightning talks to members of the HPC community from across Virginia. See here for details. Interested in giving a lightning talk? You’ll get 3 minutes and 1-2 slides to tell us all about your research. Don’t miss this chance to practice your presentation skills and share your research with a diverse audience! Sign up here by the end of today, October 24th! A helpful guide on how to give a successful lightning talk is available here Read more →

Transition from Anaconda to Miniforge: October 15, 2024

Due to the new licensing restrictions by Anaconda on research usage, the licensed Anaconda distribution was removed from the system on October 15, 2024. The current anaconda/2023.07-py3.11 module will redirect to the miniforge/24.3.0-py3.11 module, switching to conda-forge as the default package installation channel with fewer preinstalled packages. Existing environments will not be affected. However, using Anaconda default channels for research without a personal license will violate the Anaconda license. For instructional use, package installation from licensed channels is still allowed Maintenance: Oct 15, 2024 The UVA high-performance computing (HPC) system will be down for maintenance on **Tuesday, Oct 15, 2024,** beginning at 6 a. Read more →

Afton Cluster Dedicated to Prof. John Hawley

On September 16, 2024, RC dedicated the new Afton computing cluster to the memory of John F. Hawley (1958-2021), late Professor of Astronomy who was a leading researcher in computational astrophysics. He also served in the Office of the Dean of the College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences for nine years, first as Associate Dean for the Sciences and later as Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs. The ceremony featured some remarks by Josh Baller, Associate Vice President for Research Computing, and Scott Ruffner, Director of Infrastructure for Research Computing, along with a recorded message from Provost Ian Baucom. Read more →

High-Security Standard Storage Maintenance: Oct 15, 2024

The Ivy Virtual Machines (VMs) and high security zone HPC system will be down for storage maintenance on Tuesday, Oct 15, 2024, beginning at 6 a.m. The system is expected to return to full service by 6 a.m. on Wednesday, Oct 16.. IMPORTANT MAINTENANCE NOTES During the maintenance all VMs will be down as well as the UVA Ivy Data Transfer Node (DTN) and Globus services. The High-Security HPC cluster will also be unavailable for all job scheduling and viewing. If you have any questions about the upcoming Ivy system maintenance, you may contact our user services team. Ivy Central Storage transition to HSZ Research Standard To transition from old storage hardware, we have retired the Ivy Central Storage and replaced it with the new High Security Zone Research Standard storage. Read more →

HPC Maintenance: Oct 15, 2024

The HPC cluster will be down for maintenance on Tuesday, Oct 15, 2024 beginning at 6 am. You may continue to submit jobs until the maintenance period begins, but if the system determines your job will not have time to finish, it will not start until the cluster is returned to service. All systems are expected to return to service by Wednesday, Oct 16 at 6 am. IMPORTANT MAINTENANCE NOTES Expansion of /home To transition away from the Qumulo filesystem, we will migrate all /home directories to the GPFS filesystem and automatically increase each user’s /home directory limit to 200GB. Read more →

Virginia Women in HPC - Building and Maintaining Supportive Communities

When: Sep 03, 2023, 01:00 PM EST (US and Canada). What: Join us for a first of its kind Women in High Performance Computing (WHPC) event, co-hosted by the Northeast, Purdue, and Virginia WHPC chapters to engage in discussions about current challenges and opportunities for fostering a more diverse and inclusive WHPC community. Our panelists will provide an overview of their chapters’ community activities and offer insights into navigating hurdles and fostering professional growth within HPC. The format for this event will be a brief presentation by the hosts followed by theme-focused breakout rooms where participants will be invited to share their experience and personal perspective. Read more →

Research Computing Open House 2024

UPDATE: The Research Computing Open House was held on a blustery, rainy day, but the spirits of the staff and attendees were not dampened. Turnout was above expectations despite the wet weather. Attendees enjoyed the buffet and their interactions with RC staff. The winners of the random-drawing prizes were Maria Luana Morais, SOM Matt Panzer, SEAS Artun Duransoy, SEAS Read more →

HPC Maintenance: Aug 13, 2024

The HPC cluster will be partially down for maintenance on Tuesday, Aug 13, 2024 beginning at 6 a.m. The following nodes will be unavailable during this period: all of parallel afton nodes in standard and interactive A40 GPU nodes in gpu The nodes are expected to return to service by Wednesday, Aug 14 at 6 a.m. There is no impact on other nodes or services. Jobs on other nodes will continue to run. Read more →

Reinstatement of file purging of personal /scratch files on Afton and Rivanna

On Sep 1, 2024 RC system engineers will reinstate a file purging policy for personal /scratch folders on the Afton and Rivanna high-performance computing (HPC) systems. From Sep 1 forward, scratch files that have not been accessed for over 90 days will be permanently deleted on a daily rolling basis. This is not a new policy; it is a reactivation of an established policy that follows general HPC best practices. The /scratch filesystem is intended as a temporary work directory. It is not backed up and old files must be removed periodically to maintain a stable HPC environment. Key Points: Purging of personal scratch files will start on Sep 1, 2024. Read more →

Production Release of the Afton HPC System: July 2, 2024

Our new supercomputer, “Afton,” is now available for general use. This represents the first major expansion of RC’s computing resources since Rivanna's last hardware refresh in 2019. Afton represents a substantial increase in the High-Performance Computing (HPC) capabilities available at UVA, more than doubling the available compute capacity. Each of the 300 compute nodes in the new system has 96 compute cores, an increase from a maximum of 48 cores per node in Rivanna. The increase in core count is augmented by a significant increase in memory per node. Each Afton node boasts a minimum of 750GB of memory, with some supporting up to 1. Read more →

Rivanna Maintenance: May 28, 2024

Rivanna will be down for maintenance on Tuesday, May 28, 2024 beginning at 6 a.m. You may continue to submit jobs until the maintenance period begins, but if the system determines your job will not have time to finish, it will not start until Rivanna is returned to service. While drive mapping and project storage will be unavailable, other storage will remain accessible through Globus. All systems are expected to return to service by Thursday, May 30 at 6 a.m. IMPORTANT MAINTENANCE NOTES Hardware and partition changes afton: We are pleased to announce the addition of 300 nodes, 96 cores each, based on the AMD EPYC 9454 architecture. Read more →

Rivanna Maintenance Schedule for 2024

Rivanna will be taken down for maintenance in 2024 on the following days: Tuesday, February 6 Tuesday & Wednesday, May 28 & 29 Tuesday, July 2 Tuesday, October 15 Thursday, December 12 Please plan accordingly. Questions about the 2024 maintenance schedule should be directed to our user services team. Read more →

UVA Research Computing Exhibition: April 23, 2024

About This Event: The Research Computing Exhibition will be held on Tuesday, April 23, 2024 in the Newcomb Hall Ballroom. The event will include: A panel discussion made up of academic scientific computing experts and research computing faculty and staff. Judged poster session with prizes: First Place: $3,000 travel voucher Second Place: $2,000 travel voucher Third Place: $1,000 travel voucher Light refreshments If you would like to participate in the poster session, please fill out the Intent to Participate Form by Friday, March 15. While all are welcome to present a poster during the exhibition, only UVA affiliated non-faculty submissions will be eligible for the award prizes. Read more →

Rivanna Maintenance: February 6, 2024

Rivanna, Research Project storage, and Research Standard storage will be down for maintenance on Tuesday, February 6 beginning at 6 a.m. You may continue to submit jobs to Rivanna until the maintenance period begins, but if the system determines your job will not have time to finish, it will not start until Rivanna is returned to service. All systems are expected to return to service by 6 a.m. on Wednesday, February 7. UVA’s Facilities Management (FM) group will be updating the data center power grid during the maintenance period. This work is expected to be completed by 6 a.m. on 2/7. Read more →

RC’s Data Analytics Center (DAC): Now Serving UVA’s Research Community

The Data Analytics Center is UVA’s new hub for the management and analysis of your large research data. Need help with your computational research? DAC staff specialize in key domain areas such as image processing, text analysis, bioinformatics, computational chemistry and physics, neural networks, and more. And because the DAC team is located within Research Computing, they can assist in getting your workflows running on the University’s high-performance cluster or secure data system. They can answer your basic computational questions or, through funded engagements, be embedded in your projects. Big data doesn’t have to be a big deal. Learn how DAC can assist with your computational research – schedule an initial consultation with one of their data analysts by submitting a consultation request. Read more →

Rivanna Maintenance: December 18, 2023

Rivanna will be down for maintenance on Monday, December 18, 2023 beginning at 6 a.m. You may continue to submit jobs until the maintenance period begins, but if the system determines your job will not have time to finish, it will not start until Rivanna is returned to service. All systems are expected to return to service by 6 a.m. on Tuesday, December 19. IMPORTANT MAINTENANCE NOTES The operating system will be upgraded to Rocky 8.7 with system glibc 2.28 and GCC 8.5.0. Due to fundamental changes in system libraries, the entire software stack is rebuilt. Users should rebuild all self-compiled codes and R packages. Read more →

Rivanna Maintenance: October 3, 2023

Rivanna will be down for maintenance on Tuesday, October 3, 2023 beginning at 6 a.m. You may continue to submit jobs until the maintenance period begins, but if the system determines your job will not have time to finish, it will not start until Rivanna is returned to service. All systems are expected to return to service by 6 a.m. on Wednesday, October 4. IMPORTANT MAINTENANCE NOTES New largemem nodes RC engineers will be adding 36 nodes, each with 40 cores and 750 GB total memory, to the largemem partition on Rivanna. Jobs that need more memory than 9 GB per core should be submitted to the largemem partition rather than the standard partition. Read more →

Virginia Women in HPC Events in September & October

VA-WHPC September Event - Leadership Journeys Time: Sep 19, 2023, 01:00 PM EST (US and Canada). Join us for our next community event featuring Dr. Neena Imam as she shares her personal view of challenges and successes experienced throughout her inspiring leadership journey in research, HPC and AI computing. Come learn about career strategies, ask questions, and contribute to our discussion of how the playing field may be leveled to offer equitable IT & HPC leadership opportunities for women and minorities. Dr. Imam earned a PhD in Electrical Engineering and has been engaged in research and computing in a variety of roles. Read more →