To enable disruptive maintenance of the system and also to enable defragmentation of the CPU resources available, service days are scheduled on a regular basis.
Jobs will only start if their requested walltime fits before the next service day. The time to the next service day, in seconds, can be found by running the command:
time2service
Using the -d option, e.g. time2service -d will return the number of whole days until the next service day.
Service day schedule
Service days usually run from 8.00am to 6.00pm but may end earlier if service work is complete. They are scheduled out of term time wherever possible. The current schedule is:
- Monday 16 December 2024
- Wednesday 12 February 2025 (term two)
- Wednesday 09 April 2025
- Wednesday 11 June 2025
- Wednesday 30 July 2025
- Wednesday 17 September 2025
Additionally there is a shared Outlook calendar available which contains HPC service days and other related events. In Outlook's calendar view, click on the Open Calendar button in the Home ribbon, select From Address Book... and add the calendar of the rcsadmin user.
This schedule is also displayed whenever logging in to ALICE, whether via SSH or NoMachine.