Several key systems were updated and improved during the ARC-TS HPC summer maintenance from July 16 – 23, 2016.
Among other improvements, the updates provide access to more current versions of popular software and libraries, allow new features and more consistent runtimes for job scheduling, and migrate two-factor authentication for the login servers to a new system.
The improvements included:
- Upgrades to the operating OS and supporting software for the cluster. This was a major update to the previously installed RedHat version (RHEL 6.6) up to CentOS 7.1. This provides newer versions of commonly used software and libraries, and will help us deliver more user-facing features in the coming months.
- Cluster management software updates and reconfiguration. This includes Torque 6, which has a new set of resource options. The new Torque version will give better language for defining tasks, more consistent runtimes, and a platform for new features.
- The Flux Hadoop environment upgrade to Cloudera 5.7, which now includes Hive-On-Spark (the Hadoop cluster will return to service later this week).
- /scratch on Flux updates.
- Transition of the software modules environment to a system called Lmod. For more information, see our Lmod transition page. The complete Lmod User Guide can be found here: https://www.tacc.utexas.edu/research-development/tacc-projects/lmod/user-guide.
An HPC 2016 Upgrade Frequently Asked Questions page is available documenting a variety of issues related to the upgrades. Please direct any questions to hpc-support@umich.edu.
