News

News

Latest News

• 01 Aug 2022 - ALICE system maintenance on 22 Aug 2022 - First announcement: We will perform system maintenance on ALICE on 22 Aug 2022 between 09:00 and 18:00 CEST. Our primary focus will be the high-availability set up of ALICE in addition to other maintenance tasks. This will require us to take all compute and login nodes of the cluster offline. It will not be possible to run any jobs and access data on ALICE. Until maintenance starts, you can continue to use ALICE as usual and submit jobs. Slurm will also continue to run your job if the requested running time will allow it to finish before the maintenance starts. If you have any questions, please contact the ALICE Helpdesk.
• 01 Jun 2022 - Disabled access to old scratch storage: As previously announced, we have disabled access to the old scratch storage. We will keep the data available until 30 June 2022. Afterwards, we will start to delete data so that we can repurpose the storage within ALICE. You can request temporary access by contacting the ALICE Helpdesk. See also the wiki page: Data Storage.

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

System Maintenance on ALICE will take place on 22 Aug 2022 between 09:00 and 18:00 CEST (See the Maintenance Announcement)

We will perform system maintenance on the ALICE HPC cluster on Monday 22 August 2022 between 09:00 and 18:00.

On this day, it will not be possible to run any jobs and access data on ALICE. Until maintenance starts, you can continue to use ALICE as usual and submit jobs. Slurm will also continue to run your job if the requested running time will allow it to finish before the maintenance starts.

Our primary focus will be the high-availability set up of ALICE in addition to other maintenance tasks.

We understand that this represents an inconvenience for you. If you have any questions, 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

Gateway: UP
Head node: UP
Login nodes: UP
GPU nodes: UP
CPU nodes: Up
High memory nodes: UP
Storage: UP
Network: UP

Current Issues

• No access to ALICE - SSH gateway failure:
  • The ssh gateway is currently not working.
  • Access to ALICE is not possible. The cluster itself is not affected and processing continues.
  • The gateway is working again. Access is possible
  • Status: SOLVED
  • Last Updated: 02 Jun 2022, 19:45 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

Ecology

• Improving estimations of life history parameters of small animals in mesocosm experiments: A case study on mosquitoes, Dellar, M., Sam, B.P., Holmes, D., Methods in Ecology and Evolution, (February 2022), https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/2041-210X.13814

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