Latest WIN IT news
Upcoming changes to the IT infrastructure
FMRIB has a new compute cluster - read all about it
New Cluster Details
The Jalapeno cluster will be retired in early summer 2024 and its replacement is now available for early use.
This new cluster uses new access technologies to simplify the use of graphical software and updates the software to significantly more modern versions of the operating system and tools. The underlying hardware has been completely refreshed, bringing in up-to-date CPUs and NVIDIA A30 and H100 GPUs.
Slides from recent WIP session.
Remote access
Whilst the cluster continues to allow SSH access:
it no longer supports remote X11 displays or the TigerVNC system for graphical access. Instead it offers a web browser based system called Open On Demand, which inspired the new name 'Ood'.
The new compute cluster uses SLURM to submit jobs, fsl_sub remains available, and other than a change to the names of the cluster queues (or preferably a switch to -T <time in minutes> -R <memory in GB> style submission).
Queues
File transfer
File transfers from locations outside of FMRIB can now be achieved via sftp.fmrib.ox.ac.uk (instead of jalapeno.fmrib.ox.ac.uk), or through the OOD file transfer pages.
Software
The new software stack is managed and distributed by a new system - environment module names may have changed, so you may need to update scripts/shell profiles. The old locations of /opt/fmrib and /usr/local/fmrib are not available on the new cluster. If you have these paths baked into scripts they will need to replaced with the equivalent module add command. For example if your .bash_profile references the Conda installed in /opt/fmrib then you will need to replace this with one of the modules for the new Conda base software.
We have also simplified the shell profiles (what configures your login session) - see our shell customisation page.