49 lines
2.0 KiB
Markdown
49 lines
2.0 KiB
Markdown
---
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title: "Update 2025-09-26"
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author: "Rodrigo Arias Mallo"
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date: 2025-09-26
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---
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This is a summary of notable changes introduced in the last two years. We
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continue to maintain all machines updated to the last NixOS release (currently
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NixOS 25.05).
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### New compute node: fox
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We have a new [fox machine](/fox), with two AMD Genoa 9684X CPUs and two NVIDIA
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RTX4000 GPUs. During the last months we have been doing some tests and it seems
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that most of the components work well. We have configured CUDA to use the NVIDIA
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GPUs as well as AMD uProf to trace performance and energy counters from the
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CPUs.
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### Upgraded login node: apex
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We have upgraded the operating system on the login node to NixOS, which now runs
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Linux 6.15.6. During the upgrade, we have detected a problem with the RAID
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controller that caused a catastrophic failure that prevented the BIOS from
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starting.
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The `/` and `/home` partitions sit on a RAID 5 governed by a RAID hardware
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controller, however it was unable to boot properly before handling
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the control over to the BIOS. After a long debugging session, we detected that
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the flash memory that stores the firmware of the hardware controller was likely
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to be the issue, as
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[memory cells](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_memory#Principles_of_operation)
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may lose charge over time and can end up corrupting the content. So we flashed
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the latest firmware so the memory cells are charged again with the new bits and
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that fixed the problem. Hopefully we will be able to use it for some more years.
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The SLURM server has been moved to apex, so now you can allocate your jobs from
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there, including the new fox machine.
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### Translated machines to BSC building
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The server room had a temperature issue that affected our machines since the end
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of February of 2025. As the summer approached, the temperature exceeded the safe
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limits for our hardware, so we had to shutdown the cluster.
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Since then, we have moved the cluster to BSC premises, where now rests at a
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stable temperature, so hopefully we won't have more unscheduled downtime.
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