News

News

Latest News

• 12 Jan. 2022 - X2Go available on ALICE: We have added a new option to connect to ALICE. With X2Go, it is possible to work on ALICE using a graphical desktop environment. You can find details on how to set it up here: Login to ALICE using X2Go
• 11 Jan. 2022 - Early Access phase for new storage system: As part of the commissioning of ALICE's new 370TB BeeGFS-powered storage system, we have started the Early Access phase. In this phase, we give a limited number of users access to the new storage system to try it out and provide feedback to us. This way, we can test and evaluate the performance of the new storage system under more realistic conditions with various kinds of workloads. Our goal is to conclude the Early Access phase at the end of January. We have still spots left for participating in the Early Access phase. If you are interested, please contact the ALICE helpdesk with a short description of the jobs that you are running and how much storage you need.

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 20/21 November

Maintenance on the network of Leiden University will take place on the weekend of 20/21 November. The official announcement from the University can be found on the University webpage.

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

ALICE node status

CPU nodes: Node015 is out-of-service

Gateway: UP
Head node: UP
Login nodes: UP
GPU nodes: UP
CPU nodes: Up (except for node015)
High memory nodes: UP
Storage: UP
Network: UP

Current Issues

• Node015 out of service:
  • Node015 is out of service because of technical issues. We are in contact with our vendor.
  • Status: Work in Progress
  • Last Updated: 30 Nove 2021, 14:58 CET

• Copying data to the shared scratch via sftp:
  • There is currently an issue on the sftp gateway which does prevents users from copying data to their shared scratch directory, i.e., /home/<username>/data
  • A current work-around is to use scp or sftp via the ssh gateway and the login nodes.
  • Status: Work in Progress
  • Last Updated: 30 Nov 2021, 14:56 CET

See here for other recently solved issues: Solved Issues

Publications

Articles with acknowledgements to the use of ALICE

Astronomy and Astrophysics

• High-level ab initio quartic force fields and spectroscopic characterization of C₂N⁻, Rocha, C. M. R. and Linnartz, H, Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys, November 2021, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1039/D1CP03505C
• 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