COSMOS DECOMMISSIONED ON JUNE 29

Dear COSMOS users:

As we have repeatedly notified and announced in the past several months, COSMOS, the 128-cpu shared memory multiprocessor, will cease operation under the Supercomputing Facility in June. The system will be powered off in the morning of June 29 2009. Thereafter, the Chemistry department will take over its operation.

The Facility will delete all user data from the system right before power off. Since COSMOS is not under maintenance, the resumption of its operation, much less a prompt one, is not a certainty. Although we have every expectation that the transfer will be smooth and uneventful, we cannot exclude misadventures. The latter may even include junking it because of high repair costs.

For that reason, back up all needed files. By policy the Supercomputing Facility archives nightly only user home directories. You, as a user, are responsible for backing up all needed files in your /scratch/username or other non-home directories. It is up to you to choose the means to do that. One of the options you have is to use our tape archive for such files. The COSMOS User guide explains the process.

To resume processing on COSMOS under Chemistry's control, please notify Lisa Perez, mouse@mail.chem.tamu.edu