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Maintenance#

Research Computing uses scheduled maintenance windows to perform upgrades and general upkeep of all systems.

Maintenance Schedule Change

The maintenance schedule is changing from 3-hour monthly to 9-hour quarterly. The first quarterly maintenance window is September 16, 2025 8AM-5PM. The full 2026 maintenance schedule will be announced later this year. Please send any questions/concerns to help-rcc@mcw.edu.

2025 Schedule#

  • September 16, 2025 8AM-5PM

2026 Schedule#

  • TBD

Job scheduling around maintenance#

If you submit a job before a maintenance window and the job is sitting in the queue, first check to see why with squeue. In the output, you'll see the last column NODELIST(REASON). If your job is held for maintenance, you'll see (ReqNodeNotAvail, Reserved for maintenance).

Each job has a walltime request. The walltime request sets the amount of time that your job will be allowed to run on the cluster. On the HPC cluster, the maximum allowed walltime is 7 days.

If you submit your job with X hours walltime request, and the maintenance window starts in less than X hours, the job will be held until after the maintenance window closes. The reason is that the scheduler cannot guarantee your job will finish before maintenance begins.

To make the job run, resubmit your job with a walltime request that ensures the job will finish before the maintenance window. We can use a simple formula to find that walltime.

walltime = ( $maint_start_time - $current_time )

To simplify the process, use the maxwalltime command, which provides the maximum walltime request that will also allow your job to run before maintenance.