ACF Migration Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

The University is building a new modern datacentre facility in the Mary Somerville Datacentre located at the Kings Building to host the Eddie and Eleanor services. We will be moving the hardware for these two services from their current location in an older computer room to this new modern facility which will have: state of the art power, cooling and fire protection infrastructure so we can provide a higher quality and more available service to our users. The new datacentre will also provide some expansion space as your needs grow over time and to ensure the longevity of these critical services. 

We expect to move Eddie and Eleanor in stages beginning in Q1 2024 and ending by January 2025. Eleanor will be moved by the end of April 2024.

We are constructing a plan that looks to minimise disruption to the service and plans are being developed, but there will still be some unavoidable service impact when the physical move takes place. The timing of the works is dependent on completion of building works at the Mary Somerville Datacentre, and as these dates are not yet confirmed there is still some uncertainty as to the exact timeline. 

We are working both with the University Datacentre Steering Group, affected Research groups and the Mary Somerville Datacentre Programme board. The Programme board is the formal governance structure making keys decisions on dates, mitigations and timings. Your representatives on the Programme board are: 

CSE:  Fiona Vine Fiona.Vine@ed.ac.uk & Antonis Giannopoulos A.Giannopoulos@ed.ac.uk 

CMVM :  Mark Hay Mark.Hay@ed.ac.uk, Martin Taylor Martin.Taylor@ed.ac.uk & Andy Law andy.law@roslin.ed.ac.uk 

CAHSS : Rick Arnautovic Rick.Arnautovic@ed.ac.uk 

We will keep affected user communities informed of progress with the plans and any periods of disruption and expected impact as dates are confirmed. 

If you have queries about the migration and any impact to research please contact (David Fergusson dferguss@ed.ac.uk or Mike Wallis mike.wallis@ed.ac.uk). 

Interested parties should subscribe to the Eddie mailing list and updates will be published here. 

 

"Which services will be affected? "

This will affect ECDF research compute services, Eddie and Eleanor. 

 

"What disruption can I expect? "

The Eleanor service was successfully migrated with little disruption to the service in April 2024.  

For the Eddie service, the current expectation is that there will be a 2 week period where the service is reduced to a fraction of its current capacity where possible. Users should expect a total outage of Eddie for a period of time in August. More details about this will be communicated to the eddie-users mailing list when relevant. 

 

"When will the services be affected? "

We expect to move Eddie and Eleanor in stages beginning in March 2024 and ending by January 2025. 

Eleanor will move first, with the current planned date being April 2024. 

The Eddie move is currently expected to begin on 12th August 2024, although this is dependent on other works and may change if completion dates for works change. 

 

"How long will services be affected? "

Inevitably there will be a very small additional risk to services over the whole migration period, however this is currently expected to be very unlikely to occur. 

Otherwise any disruption should be confined to the periods mentioned above. 

 

"Will the services be the same after migration? "

Eleanor will operate as normal over most of the migration period; users will be notified if this is not the case. Eddie will operate under the constraints mentioned above. 

Eddie and Eleanor will operate as before once the migration has been completed. 

 

"Will the same applications be available on Eddie/Eleanor after the migration? "

Applications on Eddie and VMs on Eleanor will run as expected after the migration is complete. 

 

"Do I need to do anything to prepare for the migration? "

It would be helpful if researchers could plan their work load to avoid the planned periods of move, if possible. It would also be helpful for researchers to make sure that any valuable research data used on the computational platforms is backed-up, for instance to DataStore. Users with datasets consisting of very large numbers of very small files could help by archiving those datasets which are not being actively worked on and removing them from Eddie if at all possible.

 

"I am a School Computing Officer/IT Staff member is there anything I should do? "

It would be helpful if COs and School It staff could assist researchers in planning their workloads around the predicted periods of disruption. 

 

"I have data on storage associated with Eddie/Eleanor, will this be protected during the migration? "

Data on Eddie and Eleanor will be backed up and protected during the migration.