Messages & Announcements

  • 2013-08-15:  Tusker back online
    Category:  General Announcement

    Tusker suffered an outage of its LDAP service yesterday evening. Jobs that were running at that time most likely failed overnight and will need to be restarted. The system has been restored; please contact hcc-support@unl.edu if you have any concerns or notice anything unusual. We apologize for this inconvenience -- David Swanson


    As a result of this outage, we have also found and repaired a problem with the fallback system for authentication. This should be considerably more robust moving forward.

  • 2013-08-15:  LDAP and related issues
    Category:  System Failure

    There is an LDAP issue that is currently affecting Tusker. HCC staff are aware of the problem and working to resolve it asap. This will currently make it impossible for users to access the $WORK filesystem of Tusker -- this is temporary. More details will be sent as they become available...


    Email above originally sent about 9:30am 8/15/13. It appears it was accurate that an LDAP issue caused this; it appears largely resolved at this time, but a few more tests warranted before an all-clear is sounded.

  • 2013-08-06:  HCC Position Opening Announcement
    Category:  General Announcement

    HCC has an opening for a Systems Administrator. Please see details via the link below if you are interested.


    SYSTEMS ADMINISTRATOR
    Holland Computing Center
    University of Nebraska-Lincoln

    The Holland Computing Center (HCC) is a large High Performance Computing facility supporting the NU system. Position is responsible for system administration of a high performance computing resource that currently is connected with Infiniband and a Lustre storage system. The cluster system runs LINUX. Maintain and upgrade hardware, operating systems, and related aspects (networking, SAN storage, WAN connections) of this system, perform backups, manage user accounts, install new software (commercial and public domain), maintain system security, and monitor system usage. Evaluate, recommend and/or negotiate specific hardware purchases. This system will be integrated with national computational grids; installation and maintenance of the grid protocol software stack will be required. Supervise, distribute and coordinate tasks for several graduate and undergraduate students. Work in cooperation with other staff and researchers associated with research computing. Support users, including use of and access to this and/or other Holland Computing Center resources. Position requires frequent and effective communication of technical, operational and educational information in a variety of formats. Criminal background check will be conducted. Excellent benefits including staff/dependent scholarship program. Applicant review begins Aug 12. View <a href="https://employment.unl.edu/postings/36394">requisition S_130435 at https://employment.unl.edu</a> for details and to apply. UNL is committed to a pluralistic campus community through affirmative action, equal opportunity, work-life balance, and dual careers.

  • 2013-08-06:  Firefly draining
    Category:  General Announcement

    This message concerns Firefly only.

    As previously announced, Firefly is now easing into retirement. No new jobs will be allowed to start, but existing jobs are being allowed to finish. We will allow logins for the purpose of accessing data until August 12. Please move any desired data from Firefly by then (the sooner the better). The purchase of the new machine moved forward last week, so preparations for this must proceed.

    As always, please contact hcc-support@unl.edu with any concerns or questions.


    The currently expected timeline is as follows:

    Firefly unplugged Aug 12.
    New machine arrival TBD.
    New machine available Sept. 30.

    These dates will be updated as more details come available.

  • 2013-07-23:  Firefly retirement ... this time we mean it!
    Category:  General Announcement

    Good news: a replacement upgrade for the remainder of Firefly has been approved and is scheduled to be delivered by the end of August. Sad news: this means that the retirement of Firefly is imminent. We will be taking the remainder of the Firefly worker nodes offline as soon as August 5th. Users must migrate any critical data before that time. Please contact hcc-support@unl.edu immediately if you have any critical work depending upon Firefly. This is not a drill. Please follow the details link for further updates.


    The new machine is tentatively scheduled to arrive by Aug. 31, 2013. This necessitates prepping space for its installation. Currently, we plan to take Firefly offline Aug. 5, 2013. This date may be moved up if necessary. Users must migrate off of Firefly asap. Data currently stored on Firefly will remain available beyond Aug. 5, but users should contact hcc-support@unl.edu if there is a need for any access beyond that date. Currently, it is expected data will remain available until at least Aug. 31, 2013.