Aire Progress Update - October

This is a short update to keep everyone up to date on the progress of Aire, the University’s new HPC system. 

Since our last update in September, 50% of the Aire hardware has been installed.  Unfortunately, we have had problems with some failed data centre cooling components, and some of Aire is in danger of overheating. This means we cannot complete benchmarks and acceptance tests on the system.  Replacement parts have been ordered but have a long lead time to arrive. 

The good news is that our Research Computing colleagues will get access to part of Aire this week* to start their testing, building guides and documentation and installing applications.  We are still aiming for early access users to get onto Aire mid to late November and those colleagues will be contacted in the next few weeks.  If you haven’t already, please take a few moments to complete our User Profile Survey by 13th November. 

We are working on the installation plan to make sure we can continue to install the rest of Aire while offering a phased removal of ARC 3 and ARC4.  If you’re still working on ARC3 this is a great time to complete your projects and remove any remaining data. 

Please add any comments or questions to the Teams Channel and we will continue to keep you updated.

*the portion that is fully cooled!