***** DATA FILE DISPOSAL FOR THE SCRATCH AREA ON EOS *****

== PLEASE READ CAREFULLY ==

Dear Eos User:
Starting today through December 22 (approximately), the disk storage on Eos will undergo a five-fold expansion (~500TB) and reconfiguration. All of this will take place while Eos stays operational. But do expect, from time to time, the response of the I/O subsystem to be slow. As per our long-standing policy on disk storage, data in your /scratch/username directories is NOT backed up; only the /home directories are. And, although the transition to the new disk configuration is expected to proceed smoothly and without loss of data, we cannot eliminate that possibility. For that reason, it is important, as soon as possible, for you to take the following helpful steps:

• delete from your /scratch/username all non-essential files.
• back up by no later than Wednesday (12/14/2011) 9:00am all valuable files in /scratch/username to a non-Eos system of your choice. It is on Wednesday that the more sensitive part of upgrade begins.
• significantly reduce the amount of heavy I/O bound processing in batch or interactive mode

We request and urge your cooperation with the above steps. In parallel with your efforts, the staff will try very hard with the help of third parties to generate a complete backup of scratch. However, there is no guarantee we will succeed in this without some error or data loss. For that reason, you should make your own backup copies as much as and as soon as possible--by Wednesday morning the 14th, the latest. Also, during the upgrade period, it may become necessary for the staff to shut the system down or disable access, should something untoward occur. We hope that that will not be necessary. Spiros Vellas
Associate Director
Texas A&M University Supercomputing Facility

Posted on: 3:41 PM, December 9, 2011