CHPC Scheduled Maintenance Dates for 2020
General availability
Every reasonable effort will be made to keep our HPC resources available and operational 24 hours per day and 7 days per week. Please note however that although the support personnel will do their best to keep the facility running at all times, We cannot guarantee to promptly resolve problems outside RSA office hours, and during weekends and public holidays. Nevertheless, Please notify helpdesk@chpc.ac.za of any issues whenever they arise.
Planned maintenance
Occasionally it is necessary as part of maintaining a reliable service to update system software and replace faulty hardware. Sometimes it will be possible to perform these tasks transparently by means of queue reconfiguration in a way that will not disrupt running jobs or interactive use, or significantly inconvenience users. Some tasks however, particularly those affecting storage or login nodes, may require temporary interruption of service.
Where possible, maintenance activities involving a level of disruption to service will be scheduled on every last Friday of each month if required starting from 08:00 – 16:30 ( local RSA time). Please see the below provisional date for planned maintenance.
- 31 January 2020
- 28 February 2020
- 27 March 2020
- 24 April 2020
- 29 May 2020
- 26 June 2020
- 31 July 2020
- 28 August 2020
- 25 September 2020
- 30 October 2020
- 27 November 2020
- 18 December 2020
Please note that this does not mean that there will be disruption every month, merely that if potentially disruptive maintenance is necessary we will do our best to ensure it takes place during this period, in that case there will be advance notification.
Establishing a provisional time slot for planned maintenance has the advantage that users may be confident that `dangerous’ changes will not intentionally be undertaken at other times.
Exceptional maintenance and unplanned disruptions
It may happen that despite best efforts, it becomes necessary to reduce or withdraw service at short notice and/or outside the planned maintenance time slot. This may happen e.g. for environmental reasons, such as air conditioning or power failure, or in an emergency where immediate shutdown is required to save equipment or data.