FAS Research Computing - Notice history

FASRC monthly maintenance will take place on August 3rd, 2026. Our maintenance tasks should be completed between 9am-3pm.

Note: This maintenance takes place at the same time as the firewall cutover [details] and all running jobs will be canceled on the morning of August 3rd. Note the longer duration of this maintenance period: 9am-3pm

NOTICES:

• Training: Upcoming training from FASRC and other sources can be found on our Training Calendar. at https://www.rc.fas.harvard.edu/upcoming-training/

• Status Page: You can subscribe to our status to receive notifications of maintenance, incidents, and their resolution at https://status.rc.fas.harvard.edu/ (click Get Updates for options).

MAINTENANCE TASKS

Cannon cluster will be paused during this maintenance?: YES
FASSE cluster will be paused during this maintenance?: YES

• Slurm Upgrade to 26.05.2
  

  • Audience: Cluster

  • Impact: The cluster will be paused during this maintenance

• two-factor.rc.fas.harvard.edu OpenAuth cut-over to new server

  • Audience: New accounts or anyone requesting an OpenAuth token

  • Impact: two-factor will be unavailable while moving to a new server

• Login node down/reboots

  • Audience: All login nodes

  • Impact: Login nodes will be unavailable until after maintenance

• OOD/Open OnDemand down/reboots

  • Audience: All OOD users

  • Impact: OOD will be unavailable until after maintenance

• Lab storage cutover

  • Audience; Anyone who was contacted about this

  • Impact: See email(s) from RDM to affected users

• Netscratch 90-day retention cleanup

  • Audience; All netscratch users

  • Impact: Files older than 90 days will be removed per our scratch policy. Please note that this cleanup can happen at any time, not just during maintenance.

Thank you,
FAS Research Computing
https://docs.rc.fas.harvard.edu/
https://www.rc.fas.harvard.edu/

Data Center Firewall Replacement August 3rd 9am-3pm

NOTE: The following is in addition to our regular monthly maintenance at the same time.

On Monday August 3rd in addition to our monthly maintenance, the primary firewall in one of the data centers will be replaced. This will interrupt storage and home directory connectivity to the cluster and therefore the cluster must be idle for this cutover. General storage access will also be affected during this period.

This has been scheduled with networking to coincide with our monthly maintenance but will run longer. 9AM - 3PM

- All jobs still running on August 3rd will be canceled -

On the morning of August 3rd:

• Any running jobs will be canceled

• All partitions will be closed

• Login nodes will be shut down

• The Networking group will commence work

Once the firewall work is complete and tested, we will re-open the partitions and boot the login nodes. ETA 3PM

Due to the disruptive nature of this work, we want to advertise this with a longer advance notice. Normal maintenance emails will be sent per usual starting next week and will contain a condensed version of this information

Thank you,
FAS Research Computing
rchelp@rc.fas.harvard.edu
https://docs.rc.fas.harvard.edu/
https://www.rc.fas.harvard.edu/

FASRC monthly maintenance will take place on July 6th 2026. Our maintenance tasks should be completed between 9am-1pm.

Cannon cluster will be paused during this maintenance?: NO
FASSE cluster will be paused during this maintenance?: NO

NOTICES:

• Friday July 3rd is a university holiday (independence Day observed)

• Training: Upcoming training from FASRC and other sources can be found on our Training Calendar. at https://www.rc.fas.harvard.edu/upcoming-training/

• Status Page: You can subscribe to our status to receive notifications of maintenance, incidents, and their resolution at https://status.rc.fas.harvard.edu/ (click Get Updates for options).

• We'd love to hear success stories about your or your lab's use of FASRC. Submit your story here.

MAINTENANCE TASKS

• Domain controller replacement

  • Audience: Internal

  • Impact: None. End users should not see any impact.

• Reboot drained nodes in error state

  • Audience: Cluster nodes with errors.

  • Impact: These nodes will have been drained already in preparation. No impact on jobs on the day and the affected nodes will return to service in their respective partitions after the maintenance period.

• OOD/Open OnDemand reboots

  • Audience: All OOD users, reboot of the head nodes.

  • Impact: Running sessions will not be affected.

• Login node reboots

  • Audience; All login node users.

  • Impact: Login nodes will reboot during the maintenance window.

• Netscratch 90-day retention cleanup

  • Audience; All netscratch users

  • Impact: Files older than 90 days will be removed per our scratch policy. Please note that this cleanup can happen at any time, not just during maintenance.

Thank you,
FAS Research Computing
https://docs.rc.fas.harvard.edu/
https://www.rc.fas.harvard.edu/

The yearly power downtime at our Holyoke data center, MGHPCC, has been scheduled by the facility. This year's power downtime will take place on Tuesday June  15th - 18th, 2025.  There will be no June monthly maintenance as a result.

Since the facility will be powered down for two days this year, we will not be performing the usual maintenance tasks. 
That said, networking and other key infrastructure will be doing maintenance.

IMPORTANT NOTE: FASRC storage at both Holyoke and Boston will be affected and should not be expected to be available throughout the downtime. Please plan ahead accordingly.

• Monday June 15th -  Power-down begins at 9AM

• Tuesday June 16th - Power out at MGHPCC

• Wednesday June 17th - Power out at MGHPCC

• Thursday June 18th - Expected return to full service by 5PM

• Friday June 19th - Please note that June 19th is a university holiday

For more detailed information and follow-up, please see:
https://www.rc.fas.harvard.edu/mghpcc-yearly-shutdown or this Status Page