NIH HPC News & Announcements
Biowulf transitioning from RHEL6/CentOS6 to RHEL7/CentOS7 in June
Date: 07 May 2018 08:05:21
From: Susan Chacko
On June 4, the Biowulf cluster, the Biowulf login node, and Felix will transition from the
RHEL6/CentOS6 to the RHEL7/CentOS7 operating system. The login node, compute nodes, Helix, and Felix will be briefly unavailable, and groups of nodes will be returned to the cluster after they are transitioned to the new operating system. Thus, for a day or two there will be fewer resources
available on Biowulf than usual, but the cluster will be up and running.
For most users, this transition will not affect their jobs or workflow. Most applications have been rebuilt for CentOS7 and will be available just as they are now. However, there are a few changes that users need to be aware of:
Application installations and updates on the RHEL6/CentOS6 system will be frozen until the
transition. The HPC staff is currently migrating several hundred applications to CentOS7, so no new apps will be installed and no applications will be updated on the current CentOS6 system.
Only recent version(s) of each application will be rebuilt for CentOS7. If your scripts specify a version of an application, you may need to update your scripts. If you absolutely require an older version of an application, let us know.
After June 5, scientific applications will no longer be available on Helix. Helix will transition to an 'interactive data transfer node' and only data transfer applications such as scp, Aspera transfers, rsync, and wget/curl will be available on Helix. To run any scientific applications, you will need to start an interactive batch session on Biowulf. Helix will migrate to newer hardware to allow faster interactive data transfers within the next couple of months.
Python changes:The only central python installations will be python/2.7, python/3.5, and python/3.6. python/2.7.X and Anaconda/X will be retired. Conda environments built by users with symbolic links are likely to break.
User-built applications: Applications that were compiled by users under CentOS6 _may_ need to be recompiled for new libraries. Performance-sensitive applications (e.g. molecular simulations) should be recompiled. If you need to build or test some applications, contact us and we will give you early access to the CentOS7 partition.
Details about the changes are listed at https://hpc.nih.gov/docs/rhel7.html Additional information about the downtime and transition will be provided over the next few weeks.
Questions? Send email to staff@hpc.nih.gov
HPC Staff.
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