Too many power outages in Baker Lab, and other Chem buildings! |
Date |
Outage duration
|
Cause
|
Official link
|
ChemIT notes
|
2/27/2014
Thursday
|
2 minutes
CU's record: Power outage at 9:50a.
Oliver's record: Power outage at 9:53a. Restored at 9:55a.
|
? |
Some delayed time-stamps, from the IT folks:
http://www.it.cornell.edu/services/alert.cfm?id=3072
Initial timing info, from the power folks:
http://www.cornell.edu/cuinfo/specialconditions/#2050 |
Michael led our effort to initially evaluate and restore systems, with Oliver adding to documentation and to-do's. Lulu completed the cluster restoration efforts.
Lost 1-2 hours each for Michael, Lulu, and Oliver.
Cornell called it a "power blip". In Oliver's books, any outage longer than seconds is not a "blip".
Q: Broke one GPU workstation?
|
1/27/2014
Monday
|
17-19 minutes
CU's record: Power outage at 2:22p. Restored around 2:41p.
Oliver's record: Power outage at 2:22p. Restored at 2:39p.
|
?
|
http://www.it.cornell.edu/services/alert.cfm?id=3040 |
Lulu, Michael, and Oliver shut down headnodes and other systems which were on UPS. (Those systems non UPS shut down hard, per usual.)
Lost 3 hours, for Lulu, Michael, and Oliver.
Roger away on vacation (out of the U.S.)
|
12/23/2013
Monday
|
2 minutes
CU's report: 08:36 AM - 8:38 AM
(ChemIT staff not in yet.)
|
Human error?
|
http://www.it.cornell.edu/services/alert.cfm?id=2982 |
Terrible timing, right before the longest staff holiday of the year.
ChemIT staff not present during failure.
Lost most of the day, for Roger and Oliver.
Michael Hint and Lulu way on vacation (out of the U.S.)
|
7/17/13
|
Half a morning (~2 hours)
CU's report: 8:45 AM - 10:45 AM
|
|
http://www.it.cornell.edu/services/alert.cfm?id=2711 |
|
Question: When power is initially restored, do you trust it? Or might it simply kick back off in some circumstances?
- Because we don't know the answer to this question following any specific power outage, we are reluctant to turn back on servers right away. Instead, we like to wait ~10-25 minutes.
What would it cost to UPS our research systems?
Assuming protection for 1-3 minutes MAXIMUM:
Do all headnodes and stand-alone computers in 248 Baker Lab
- Started getting done. About $170/ headnode every ~4 years.
CCB Headnodes' UPS status:
Cluster |
Done
|
Not done
|
Notes
|
Collum
|
X
Spring'14
|
|
Sprin
|
Lancaster, with Crane (new)
|
X
Spring'14
|
|
Funded by Crane.
|
Hoffmann
|
X
Spring'14
|
|
|
Scheraga
|
X
Fall'14
|
|
See below chart for s4 tand-alone computational computers |
Loring
|
|
X
|
Unique: Need to do ASAP
|
Abruna
|
|
X
|
Unique: Need to do ASAP
|
C4 Headnode: pilot
Widom's 2 nodes there. |
X
Old UPS |
|
Provisioned on the margin, since still a pilot.
(Not funded by Widom.) |
Widom |
|
X
|
See "C4", above |
Stand-alone computers' UPS status:
Computer |
Done
|
Note done
|
Notes
|
Scheraga's 4 GPU rack-mounted computational computers
|
|
X
|
Need to protect?
Data point: Feb'14 outage resulted in one of these not booting up correctly.
|
NMR web-based scheduler
|
X
Spring'14
|
|
|
Coates: MS SQL Server |
|
X
|
Unique: Need to do ASAP |
Do all switches: Maybe ~$ 340 ($170*2), every ~4 years.
- Recommend: Do ASAP. Q: Funding?
Do all compute nodes: ~$18K every ~4 years.
- ~20 20amp UPS's ($900 each) required.
- These are from back-of-the-envelope calculations.
- If were to actually implement, may be smarter ways to do this, but cost will likely not be lower. (In fact, costs may be higher, if sufficiently higher benefit doing it a different way, for example.
- Issues and concerns with actually implementing this approach: Costs. Rack space. Maybe power. Maybe cord lengths. What other issues?
Reboot switches
- 8 switches support the clusters (out of 12 in the room).
Start headnodes, if not on already
- Only a few are on UPS. Those can obviously be left on.
- None should be set to auto-start on power-off.
Confirm headnodes accessible via SSH
PuTTY on Windows
Use FMPro to get connection info?! (not the right info there, though...)
Menu => List Machine / User Selections = > List Group or selected criteria
- Machine function => Server HN
Start compute nodes
If nodes done show up, consider:
- Restart Torque scheduler on problematic nodes.
- Try rebooting the switch the affected nodes are connected to, especially if the problematic nodes are grouped to a single switch.
- Hook up a monitor as one of the high nodes boot.