IT Center Changes

In order to unify the resource allocation process and to avoid confusion, we will apply the following changes on October 2nd, 2024:

• If you want to apply for GPU resources, you have to use “k GPU-h”  (i.e., thousand GPU hours) instead of “Mio core-h”. This includes the detailed project description as well as the JARDS online form. For convenience reasons, the JARDS system will still calculate the core hour equivalent. Until the end of the year we will accept the old metric in your detailed project descriptions, of course.
• The views in JARDS.project (RWTH projects, NHR projects) will show the used contingents in “k GPU-h” instead of “Mio. core-h” for all GPU resources.
• The command line tool r_wlm_usage will show the used contingents in “k GPU-h” instead of “Mio. core-h” for all GPU resources (i.e. “ML partition”).
• If you act as scientific reviewer, you should recommend GPU resources in “k GPU-h” instead of “Mio. core-h”.

There will be no changes for the HPC (i.e. CPU resources) partition. Please note: The internal billing mechanisms will not change at all. Our Slurm configuration will still use a billing which respects the used memory and core equivalents of a node. Basically, the factor 24 between GPU-h and Core-h will be used.

You can find all limits for the different project categories on our website.

You can track any disruptions or security advisories that may occur due to the aforementioned change in the Email category on our status reporting portal.

Dear CLAIX Users

As you may have noticed, access to the “default” Anaconda repositories (repo.anaconda.com and others hosted at anaconda.com) has been blocked by the firewall on the HPC cluster. This action is necessary because RWTH is not permitted to use the these repositories due to licensing issues.

We understand that blocking the Anaconda domain may disrupt your current workflows. To mitigate this, we set conda-forge as the default channel in /etc/conda/condarc. If you still encounter issues, please check the .condarc file in your home directory and make sure to remove “defaults”, “r”, and “main” from the channel list.

For new Conda users, we suggest using Miniforge, as this distribution uses conda-forge as its default repository.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. If you require assistance, please reach out to servicedesk@itc.rwth-aachen.de.

PS: For a brief time, we accidentally blocked anaconda.org. We have corrected this issue.

Dear CLAIX Users

As you might remember, in April, we transitioned the HPCWORK directories to a new Lustre-System. This new system provides significantly greater file quotas. We are pleased to announce that you now have a default quota of 1 million files.

We hope this enhancement makes your workflows easier and more capable.

Happy computing!
Your HPC Admins