Quest, including the Quest Analytics Nodes, the Genomics Compute Cluster (GCC), the Kellogg Linux Cluster (KLC), and Quest OnDemand, will be unavailable for scheduled maintenance starting at 8 a.m. on Monday, September 8, and ending at 5 p.m. on Friday, September 12. Globus will also be unavailable for file transfers to and from Quest, and between Quest and the Research Data Storage Services (RDSS)/FSMRESFILES. This maintenance is necessary to apply critical system upgrades and perform regular system care. After the maintenance, multi-node (or parallel) jobs will benefit from more stable internode communication. During this downtime, the following maintenance will be performed:
• Quest's job scheduler, Slurm, will be upgraded to 24.11.6 enabling features such as enhanced job utilization tracking. • Security patches will be applied to all Quest nodes. • License managers for licensed software on Quest will be migrated to a new server. • Power and cooling equipment maintenance will be performed for the healthy operation of computing infrastructure. • Network maintenance will be performed to improve communication across the nodes and the storage system.
Impact on Quest and Globus Users • Access to Quest will be unavailable. Users will not be able to submit new jobs, run jobs, access files stored on Quest, or use the Quest Analytics Nodes, GCC, KLC, and Quest OnDemand during the maintenance window. • Jobs submitted to Quest through Slurm with a wall time that extends beyond the start of the downtime will not run and must be resubmitted after the maintenance. These jobs will receive a "ReqNodeNotAvail, Reserved_for_maintenance" message as the queue reason. • User jobs and processes running on the Quest login nodes, the Quest Analytics Nodes, and KLC will be canceled at the beginning of the downtime. • The Globus data transfer tool will be unavailable to transfer files from and to Quest and between Quest and Research Data Storage Services (RDSS)/FSMRESFILES: https://services.northwestern.edu/TDClient/30/Portal/KB/ArticleDet?ID=2017 • Requests submitted for Quest and Globus shortly before or during the downtime will be addressed following the maintenance period. • The expiration dates of all user files in Quest global scratch space will be extended for another 30 days before downtime. Data in scratch space will have updated timestamps to allow data to remain in scratch. You can use file system utilities to monitor the expiration dates in scratch space: https://services.northwestern.edu/TDClient/30/Portal/KB/ArticleDet?ID=1546#checkscratch
This scheduled maintenance affects: Research Technologies and Support (Quest Analytics Nodes, Quest High-Performance Computing Cluster (HPCC) (Server Management)).