The new cluster has newer, better hardware, and runs RHEL 8 (a newer version of the base operating system). Notably, there will be a number of A100s available--these are much faster than the existing K80s. Although some things have changed, most changes are for the better, and most software should continue to “just work”.
The least you need to know
The partitions have changed. You can see them with the ‘sinfo’ command, and the naming is intuitive. The time limits are currently as on the existing Talapas.
Default memory for all jobs is now 4GB. If your job needs more, you will need to explicitly request it.
Depending on how existing GPU software was compiled, it may need to be recompiled or upgraded.
In some cases, RHEL shared library changes may break existing software. File a ticket, and we’ll get it fixed ASAP.
Not yet available but coming soon
The ‘sacct’ command, used to determine memory use and other stats for completed jobs
Open OnDemand
The new Intel compilers (the existing compilers are down/gone due to licensing issues)
More A100s
cron jobs
mail (for SLURM status emails)
Technical Differences
These probably won’t affect you, but they are visible differences that you might notice.
Hostnames now use the long form. (e.g., “login1.talapas.uoregon.edu”)
You may need to use the long form of hostnames to access other campus hosts. That is, use “somehost” may not work, but “somehost.uoregon.edu” will.
Linux group names have changed and are now longer. For example, “is.racs.pirg.bgmp” instead of “bgmp”. Since this information is now coming from the campus Active Directory server, there are a number of other AD groups included. You can just ignore these.
Currently, lookup of group names can be quite slow, taking 30 seconds or longer. We’ll work on speeding this up.