Who is affected:
ALL users of CS Department (or University) cluster computing systems
AND
ALL users of research rack space at the HPCRC (151 Forrestal Road)
What is happening:
On June 9, 2026, all “A”-side power at the HPCRC will be turned off and
unavailable for the full business day while preventative major maintenance
is performed on the building’s power systems. “A”-side power accounts for
half the power to the building, and ALL of the power to most racks occupied
by the Computer Science Department.
ALL researchers with equipment in HPCRC racks should anticipate that they
will lose power at 07:00 and not regain power before 15:00. It is
recommended that researchers arrange to power off their equipment prior to
the 07:00 start time and be prepared to check its health and restore
services after the 15:00 end. CS Staff is announcing a wider 12-hour window
to allow for this time to orderly shut down clusters, and to power back on
after the work.
ALL ionic and neuronic cluster resources will be offline and unavailable.
ALL courselab and armlab systems will be offline and unavailable.
The “cycles” systems will be rebooted at the start of the window, but are
anticipated to be available.
All other central CS services (e.g. email, web service, storage) are
anticipated to remain available.
OIT’s announcement of this maintenance can be found here:
oit.princeton.edu/events/hpcrc-planned-downtime-maintenance
Why is it happening:
The power equipment at the HPCRC is overdue for major maintenance to reduce
the risk of unplanned failures and outages. This maintenance window, and a
related upcoming outage on October 20, will allow for this maintenance to
be performed safely.
The October 20 outage will be announced separately later in the Summer and
will be essentially identical to this one, but affecting the “B”-side
power.
We will post updates to the status page: www.csstaff.org
as necessary.
If this downtime will cause you undue hardship, please contact
csstaff@cs.princeton.edu immediately, so we can discuss options to reduce
any negative impact. Your patience is appreciated.
Sincerely,
CS Staff