ARCHIVED: Completed project: Steel cluster retirement and Mypage migration

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Primary UITS contact: Peg Lindenlaub

Completed: June 24, 2008

Description: The High Performance Systems (HPS) group began the process of retiring the Steel cluster on Monday, June 23, 2008. The hardware has reached the end of its lifecycle and has been replaced by Quarry, IU's newest supercomputer. The Quarry cluster went into production on August 20, 2007. Quarry will not host mypage.iu.edu; responsibility for that service is transitioning to the System Integration Team (SIT). On June 23, Mypage services migrated to a new platform known as Mercury.

Outcome: The goal of this project is threefold:

  • Retire hardware that has reached the end of its lifecycle
  • Provide newer, faster replacement hardware for general purpose Unix computing as well as research computing
  • Transition the responsibility for Mypage services to SIT

Milestones and status:

  • August-September 2007: Write Quarry Knowledge Base documents
  • September 19, 2007: Boilerplate notice added to KB documents and WPS web pages
  • September 2007: First wave of customer notification
  • November/December 2007: Mypage/Steel user demographics identified; current Mypage environment identified; initial VMs, Mercury, and Satellite built; analysis of what to migrate started
  • December 14, 2007: First round of Quarry KB documents completed
  • January 23, 2008: Update published in the Monitor and communicated to TLIT centers
  • February 2008: The following Math/Stat packages retired on Steel because they are available on Quarry:
    • Mathematica
    • StatTransfer 9
    • Stata10
  • March-April 2008: Set up web server and login boxes for Mypage services
  • March 31, 2008: Work begins on modifications to KB documents that reference Steel
  • April 2008: Communications milestones:
    • /etc/motd on Steel updated to include information about the retirement and migration
    • Mailing sent to the TLIT centers
    • Update published in the Monitor
    • Direct mailing sent to Steel users that are using absolute pathnames in their .htm, .html, .mt_access files
  • April-June 2008: Second wave of customer notification with details on transitioning web pages
  • May 2008: Rules established for identifying accounts to be migrated; started identifying types/frequency of rsyncs needed for migraton; adjustments made to /usr/local and login environment; process for Mypage account processing 80% complete; Apache configuration started
  • June 2, 2008: Initial setup of VMs complete; rules for migration of accounts clearly identified; rsyncs for migrating accounts written and tested; review need for ezreset, spinweb; begin final phase of account processing testing; begin revision of directory of personal home pages; on Steel, change www directory permissions on accounts that are disabled, stop serving those pages
  • June 11, 2008: Migration date of June 23rd represented at change management; communication prepared for Monitor, posted in /etc/motd, emailed to LSPs
  • June 13, 2008: Changes to KB articles finalized; prepped for 6/23 release
  • June 16, 2008: Communication emailed to instructors by the Student Enrollment Services Office
  • June 23, 2008: DNS changes made; Steel file systems mounted read-only; Mypage migration begins; Steel account creates disabled; Mypage account creates enabled following migration
  • June 24, 2008: Project completed

Benefits:

  • Quarry provides a newer, faster, more robust environment for general Unix computing.
  • Quarry also serves as replacement hardware for AVIDD.
  • The web server and login boxes will be created in the virtual server environment managed by the Enterprise System Administration group.

Primary client: Students, faculty, and staff who have accounts on Steel (25,000+)

Client impact: Students, faculty, and staff who currently use Mypage services will have to transition to the new environment. Details on the transition phase will be available in April.

Project team:

  • Jan Aho, Enterprise Decision Support Services
  • David Bickel, Identity Management Systems
  • Michael Dalton, Online Support
  • Abe Dashiell, Support Center
  • Jacob Farmer, Identity Management Systems
  • Jeff Gronek, High Performance Systems
  • Dave Hancock, High Performance Systems
  • Greg Hanek, IT Training
  • Mary Hrovat, Online Support
  • Teresa Hunter, Storage and Virtualization
  • Brian Kanowsky, Online Support
  • Jeannie Kellam, Enterprise Web Tech Services
  • Peg Lindenlaub, High Performance Systems
  • Brian McGough, Enterprise Services Integration
  • Karen Garrett, Online Support
  • Pete Percival, Enterprise Web Tech Services
  • Tim Ryder, IT Professional Services and Support
  • Craig Spanburg, Enterprise Web Tech Services
  • Manjit Trehan, Enterprise Web Tech Services

Governance: Craig Stewart, Associate Dean for Research Technologies

This is document avok in the Knowledge Base.
Last modified on 2018-01-18 15:49:36.