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PDC Center for High Performance Computing

Details you need to know about Beskow maintenance

All Beskow and Lustre users need to read this!

Published Jun 25, 2019

As you are aware, Beskow is currently undergoing maintenance. During this period, the operating system on Beskow is being updated from Cray OS 5 to Cray OS 7, and the Lustre file storage system is also being upgraded.
In conjunction with these upgrades, some necessary changes will be implemented, which will lead to adjustments in terms of how software will be used on the cluster.

  1. The upgraded Beskow cluster will use native SLURM, which means that “aprun” will not be available any longer and you will instead need to use “srun”. More information about this is available at www.pdc.kth.se/support/documents/run_jobs/job_scripts_beskow.html  and at www.pdc.kth.se/support/documents/run_jobs/run_interactively.html#running-on-beskow Please change your submit scripts accordingly prior to submitting your batch scripts to the upgraded cluster.
  2. The “module” command will, by default, load the latest version into your environment if no version is provided manually. More information is available at www.pdc.kth.se/support/documents/run_jobs/job_scheduling.html#using-modules However we recommend that every “module load” command contains information about what version of the software will be used - for example, type “module load gromacs/2019.2” instead of “module load gromacs”. This will ensure that your jobs are consistent when the default module changes.
  3. When Beskow has been upgraded from Cray OS 5 to Cray OS 7, all the software that is available on the cluster will need to be recompiled. We are therefore taking this opportunity to purge unused software packages. Initially we will install recent versions of the most popular software packages, but if you are using less common software or particular versions of software packages, please send an email to PDC Support with details of the particular software and version that you are using, so we can add it to our installation list.
    More information about which software packages are being installed can
    found at www.pdc.kth.se/software .

If you have any questions about the upgrade or what it means for you, please contact PDC Support straight away. For details about contacting us, see
www.pdc.kth.se/support/documents/contact/contact_support.html .

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