[Tgcmgroup] bluefire

[Ben Foster]

Dear tgcmgroup:

The following is copied from the 6/4/08 daily bulletin.
Note that /ptmp and /home directories will automatically
be mounted from blueice to bluefire, so there should be
no need to save or move your files from blueice.

I do not anticipate many problems building and running our
codes on bluefire, just keep in mind that bluefire will 
have 32-way nodes (blueice has 16-way nodes), so you may
want to change some #BSUB options accordingly for model runs. 

--Ben


Bluefire / Blueice Transition in June -New Schedule
___________________________________________________
Updated Wednesday 06/04/08

The installation and testing of NCAR's newest supercomputer, an
IBM POWER6 computer, called bluefire, is going well. Thirty-three
nodes of bluefire may be available to the user community as early
as Monday, June 9.  Please see the Daily Bulletin for the latest
information.

The characteristics of bluefire and a getting started guide is
available at: http://www.cisl.ucar.edu/computers/bluefire/
Note: There is no need for users to move files from blueice to
bluefire.  Blueice files (home and ptmp directories) will be
automatically mounted on bluefire. 

Due to electrical power limitations in the NCAR computing
facility, blueice and the entire bluefire cluster cannot be
powered-up at the same time, so blueice will be decommissioned,
but no earlier than 08:00 Mountain Time on *June 16* (updated). 

Important downtimes after blueice is decommissioned, week of
June 16:

- Electrical load testing and completion of bluefire installation
(2nd stage) will mean that bluevista, bluefire, the fis
filesystem and divisional filesystems will be unavailable for 2-3
days, most likely during the week of June 16.  Details on the
downtimes will be published in the Daily Bulletin. Please plan on
interruptions in your computing work during the week of June 16.

Due to power constraints, a portion of bluevista will be
permanently powered off, most likely during the week of June 16,
to provide electrical power for the rest of bluefire.  This
increases the need for users to transition to bluefire as soon as
possible.  Bluevista queues will get long! 

For the latest information on the availability of bluefire and
scheduled downtimes please see the Daily Bulletin:
http://www.cisl.ucar.edu/cpg/dailyb/todays.html

If you have questions about bluefire and running your code on 
bluefire, please contact Customer Support:
http://www.cisl.ucar.edu/support/ 

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Ben Foster		      	High Altitude Observatory (HAO)
foster at ucar.edu			phone: 303-497-1595  fax: 303-497-1589  
Nat. Center for Atmos. Res.     P.O. Box 3000 Boulder CO 80307 USA
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