News

News

Latest News

• 23 Jul. 2021 - Leiden University network maintenance on 31 Jul/01 Aug: Maintenance on the network of Leiden University will take place on the weekend of 31 July/01 August. During this time ALICE will continue to run, but in total isolation, i.e., with no internet access. This means that you will not be able to login to ALICE and jobs cannot for example pull code, download data or access license servers. During the maintenance, the status will be tracked here Next maintenance
• 29 Jun. 2021 - ALICE system maintenance finished (Update): System maintenance has finished and ALICE is available again.
  • However, two one issue remains.
  • Login node 1 is down due to technical issues on the node. Login2 is running and can be used instead. Connections that are intended to login1 are automatically routed to login2. There should be no need to change your ssh configs.
  • The Infiniband network is down due to technical issues on the Infiniband switch.
  • List of changes:
    • Login node 1 is running and the NVIDIA Tesla T4 has been integrated successfully. Instructions on using the T4 will follow soon.
    • Slurm version 20.11.7 is now running on ALICE
    • EasyBuild 4.4.0 is used for the Intel and AMD branch
    • The partitions notebook-gpu, notebook-cpu, playground-cpu, playground-gpu have been removed.
    • The time limit on the mem partition has been changed from Infinite to 14 days.
    • Resources on the testing partitions are now limited to 15 CPUs per node, a maximum amount of memory per node of 150G, a default memory per cpu of 10G.
• 28 Jun. 2021 - ALICE system maintenance continues tomorrow: During our maintenance, we encountered a few issues with the Infiniband switch and login node 01. Because of the issues, we also did not finish updating the GPU nodes. We will continue working on these item tomorrow (Tuesday, 29 June 2021) until at least 12:00. ALICE will remain offline for maintenance.
• 27 Jun. 2021 - ALICE offline for system maintenance: More information here Next maintenance.
• 25 Jun. 2021 - System maintenance on ALICE: ALICE will undergo system maintenance on 28 June 2021. More information here Next maintenance.
• 2 Jun. 2021 - Rclone available on ALICE: Rclone is available on ALICE and there are instructions on how to set it up to transfer files to and from SurfDrive and ResearchDrive: Data transfer to and from ALICE. This is a new feature and feedback on your experience is very welcome.

Older News

For older news, please have a look at the news archive: News Archive

Maintenance

This section is used to announce upcoming maintenance and provide information before, during and after it. For general information about our maintenance policy, please have a look here: To maintenance policy

Next Maintenance

Leiden University network maintenance on 31 Jul/01 Aug

Maintenance on the network of Leiden University will take place on the weekend of 31 July/01 August.

During this time ALICE will continue to run, but in total isolation, i.e., with no internet access. This means that you will not be able to login to ALICE and jobs cannot for example pull code, download data or access license servers.

We will use this page to provide updates on the status of the cluster.

If you have any question, please contact the ALICE Helpdesk.

Previous Maintenance days

• 28 Jun 2021
• 08 Mar 2021
• 01 Feb 2021
• 02 Nov 2020
• 05 Oct. 2020

Publications

Articles with acknowledgements to the use of ALICE

Astronomy

• Effects of stellar density on the photoevaporation of circumstellar discs, Concha-Ramirez, F. et al., MNRAS, 501, 1782 (February 2021), DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/staa3669
• Lucky planets: how circum-binary planets survive the supernova in one of the inner-binary components, Fagginger Auer, F. & Portegies Zwart, S., eprint arXiv:2101.08033, Submitted to SciPost Astronomy (January 2021), https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/link_gateway/2021arXiv210108033F/arxiv:2101.08033
• Trimodal structure of Hercules stream explained by originating from bar resonances, Asano, T. et al., MNRAS, 499, 2416 (December 2020), DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/staa2849
• Oort cloud Ecology II: Extra-solar Oort clouds and the origin of asteroidal interlopers, Portegies Zwart, S., eprint arXiv:2011.08257, accepted for publication by A&A, (November 2020), https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/link_gateway/2020arXiv201108257P/arxiv:2011.08257
• The ecological impact of high-performance computing in astrophysics. Portegies Zwart, S., Nature Astronomy, 4, 819–822 (September 2020), DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-020-1208-y.

Computer Sciences

• Better Distractions: Transformer-based Distractor Generationand Multiple Choice Question Filtering, Offerijns, J., Verberne, V., Verhoe, T., eprint arXiv:2010.09598, (October 2020), https://arxiv.org/abs/2010.09598

Leiden researchers and their use of HPC

• Identifying Earth-impacting asteroids using an artificial neural network. John D. Hefele, Francesco Bortolussi and Simon Portegies Zwart. Astronomy & Astrophysics, February 2020.

News articles featuring ALICE

• Hazardous Object Identifier: Supercomputer Helps to Identify Dangerous Asteroids, Oliver Peckman, HPC Wire, 04 March 2020, link
• Elf reuzestenen op ramkoers met de aarde?, Annelies Bes, 13 February 2020, Kijk Magazine, link
• Leidse sterrenkundigen ontdekken aardscheerders-in-spé, NOVA, 12 February 2020, link