July 28, 2014

Today's topics:

Wilson computer room AC upgrade, Aug 4-13; AC is down today.

The main cooling unit in the Wilson computer room (W221) will be replaced August 4-13. During this time, we will be selectively shutting down non-critical systems to reduce the heat load. If the heat load becomes unmanageable, we may need to shut down systems more aggressively, in which case users may observe some degradation of central services. Outages will be announced via lab-wide emails.

While the replacement is still scheduled for August 4-13, the main cooling unit failed on 7/28 and, as of this writing, is down. Some non-vital systems have been shut down to reduce the heat generated in the room.

Accelerator File System Maintenance - 8pm Monday 7/28

At approximately 8pm tonight, Monday 7/28, the following file systems will be temporarily unavailable:

/nfs/acc/user (\\samba\accuser)
/nfs/acc/archive 
/nfs/acc/temp (\\samba\acctemp)
/nfs/acc/srf (\\samba\accsrf)
/nfs/acc/cesrtacam
/nfs/acc/vacuum (\\samba\vacuum)
/nfs/acc/xbsm (\\samba\xbsm)
/nfs/acc/rf (\\samba\rf)
/nfs/cesrta

This maintenance is required to repair the file systems served by accfs. We expect the maintenance to take between 1 and 2 hours, and hope to have everything back up before 10pm.

Please note that this maintenance was rescheduled for 8pm tonight, Monday 7/28, to accommodate operational schedules.

CLASSECluster upgrade to Scientific Linux 6.5

At approximately 10am Tuesday, July 29, the CLASSE Linux Cluster will start upgrading to Scientific Linux 6.5. During this upgrade, there may be periodic delays accessing web, database, or file system services served from the CLASSE Cluster. We expect this work to be complete by 2pm.

Matlab license renewal

CLASSE's Matlab license has been renewed for the next year.

• Network-served licenses: The license file format has changed, so it will take more time this year to get network license serving for the next year to work properly. The process has been started and should be finished well before this year's Matlab network licenses expire.
• Standalone (node-locked) licenses: Standalone licenses expire before network-served licenses. If you need to have a standalone license renewed, please contact CLASSE's IT group (email to service-classe@cornell.edu preferred) SOON.

Retirement of legacy file systems

After repeated disk failures on a decades old file server, the CLASSE IT group will be archiving the following file systems to tape and removing them from service. Any data from these file systems can be restored as needed with a ServiceRequest. Note that the list of filesystems has grown since last week's announcement.

/nfs/cleoc/mc10
/nfs/cleoc/mc11
/nfs/cleoc/mc15
/nfs/cleoc/data9
/nfs/cleoiii/data1
/nfs/cleoiii/data4
/nfs/cor/an3
/nfs/c3mc/mc4
/nfs/grp/carleton
/nfs/grp/nw1
/nfs/grp/ro1
/nfs/grp/syr

Group Chat Service

The CLASSE IT group has deployed a locally installed chat service (technically known as XMPP or Jabber) to facilitate intercommunication amongst CLASSE projects or groups. All chat messages are encrypted, and no communications are stored on our servers. If you need a group chat set up, please open a service request.  For more information and instructions on setting up clients for Windows, Linux, OS X, iOS, and Android, please see XMPPChat . Due to the wide variety of clients available, we will only be able to provide low priority, limited support in configuring chat clients.

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General network and server maintenance will occur every Tuesday from 12:00 noon to 2:00 PM. The CLASSE-IT group will always announce any expected disruptions in our NewsLetter and via CLASSE-IT-NEWS-L, but with the size and complexity of our network there is always the potential for something to go wrong. We will do our best to contain all network maintenance and planned outages to Tuesdays from 12:00 noon to 2:00 PM.

Unless other arrangements have been made, CLASSE-managed Windows systems may be updated and rebooted on Tuesday morning at 2:00 AM, so please avoid critical or lengthy operations at that time. For more details, please see SystemExpectations.

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Questions or problems? Submit a service request.

Other resources:

• CLASSE IT Home Page
• Previous newsletters

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