Shaheen II hardware is complete!

Dear Shaheen II Users, 

Over the last couple of weeks you have experienced considerable disruption in using Shaheen II due to a combination of scheduled maintenance sessions and unforeseen failures in hardware and software. We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience these might have caused. Our team works hard to minimize these downtimes, keeping as our most important goal to ensure you are highly productive on our systems.

We will continue to have teething problems with the system, however, we will endeavor to provide more timely communications regarding the status of Shaheen II, so that you can plan accordingly.

That being said, the objective of the recent maintenance sessions was to add SSD based DataWarp (Burst Buffer) capability to Shaheen II. DataWarp technology was acquired to increase the performance of IO bound applications on the system. This hardware install completes phase 1 of the Shaheen II setup. 

We expect the system to be increasingly stable as things settle down, although its complexity and our experience tells us that failures will inevitably happen. Shaheen II is an exceptional system at our disposal here at KAUST and the KSL team will work with you to maximize its availability for your research activities. 

Please contact us at help@hpc.kaust.edu.sa, if you have any questions or concerns.

The KSL Team.