Stepwise Decommission of JUQUEEN

In March 2018, the installation of the JUWELS Cluster entered into the next phase with the physical delivery of the first Bull Sequana cells (i.e. racks) to the data centre at JSC. As the number and size of the JUWELS components in Jülich increase, the end of the operational time span of the Blue Gene/Q JUQUEEN is unfortunately also approaching. Due to facility limitations, specifically the capacity of the cooling infrastructure, it is not possible to operate JUWELS and its predecessor JUQUEEN simultaneously.

JSC intends to keep JUQUEEN, which remains highly popular even in its advanced age, operational for as long as possible and to minimize the duration in which no GCS computing resources are offered. To this end, only parts of JUQUEEN will be shut down so as to reduce overall power and cooling load, and to enable the power-on of further JUWELS equipment. As far as possible, the setup of JUWELS will be scheduled so that a maximum percentage of JUQUEEN remains operational.

It is currently anticipated that the first JUQUEEN racks will be shut down in mid-April. The final JUQUEEN shutdown is expected to take place in mid- May. As the JUWELS setup continues and the reliability of the time scale increases, JSC will inform all JUQUEEN users about the updated time schedule. As a result of JUQUEEN support contracts ending in March, the system is operated without hardware service and a reduced availability level must therefore be expected. All JUQUEEN users have been informed via email regarding the modalities of the computing time allocations on JUQUEEN and JUWELS.
(Contact: Dr. Dorian Krause, d.krause@fz-juelich.de)

JSC News No. 257, 24 April 2018