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ARCHER2 Weekly Newsletter

By ARCHER2 Service on June 4, 2025

Tags: newsletters 

ARCHER2 Extension: 22nd November 2025 - 21st November 2026

We are pleased to announce that the ARCHER2 extension has now been confirmed. The new ARCHER2 service end date is 21st November 2026.

ARCHER2 Capability Days: 17-19 June 2025

The fourth ARCHER2 Capability Days session will run from 17-19 June 2025. ARCHER2 Capability Days are a mechanism to allow users to run large scale tests on the system free of charge. The motivations behind Capability Days are:

  • Enhancing world-leading science from ARCHER2 by enabling modelling and simulation at scales that are not otherwise possible.
  • Enabling capability use cases that are not possible on other UK HPC services.
  • Providing a facility that can be used to test scaling to help prepare software and communities for future exascale resources.

Capability Days are made up of two parts:

  • 0800-2000 BST, 17 June 2025 - pre-Capability Days session (pre-capabilityday QoS) to allow users to test scaling and job setup ahead of full Capability Day
    • Supports jobs 256-1024 nodes, 20 min maximum run time
    • Jobs are uncharged
  • 2000 BST, 17 June - 1400 BST, 19 June 2025 - Capability Days session (capabilityday QoS)
    • Supports jobs 512-4096 nodes, 1 hour maximum run time
    • Jobs are uncharged

Advanced Computing Facility (ACF) Power Outage: Friday 29th August - Monday 15th September

Due to a significant Health and Safety risk, associated with our power supply to the site, that requires action at the ACF, there will be a full power outage to the site from Friday 29th August - Monday 15th September. Specialised external contractors will be working on a 24/7 basis for the outage period replacing switchgear.

ARCHER2 User Impact

ARCHER2 will be completely powered off for the duration of this period.

Users will not be able to connect to ARCHER2 and will not be able to access data on any of the ARCHER2 file systems. The system will be drained of jobs ahead of the power outage and jobs will not run during this period. Any queued jobs will remain in the queue during the outage and jobs will start once the service is returned.

SAFE and the ARCHER2 website will be available during the outage period so users can continue to contact us and we will be providing updates during the outage on the Status page.

We will notify users once the service is available and we expect this to be on Monday 15th September.

We apologise for the inconvenience of this essential outage. Please contact support@archer2.ac.uk if you have any questions.

ARCHER2 User Survey 2025

We are committed to continually improving the ARCHER2 Service and would like to request your input to help us understand what is important to you, where the Service is working well and where there is scope for improvement.

The ARCHER2 User Survey consists of just a few questions and should take only a few minutes of your time to complete. There are opportunities to add more detailed comments if you wish.

For each survey response received, we will donate £1 to Save The Children. Additionally, if you enter your ARCHER2 username in the final question, then you will be entered into the prize draw to win one of five £50 Amazon vouchers.

Complete the survey

Thank you in advance for taking the time to complete this survey. The responses will be used to try and improve the service for you and to help identify key areas for service development.

Cray Programming Environment Site Survey

HPE are looking for feedback to improve their products and offerings. Please consider filling in the CPE CUG 2025 survey.

All questions are short and optional, so it would not take long to fill in. Thanks.

Recently added known issues

The “Known Issues” page of the ARCHER2 Documentation https://docs.archer2.ac.uk/known-issues/ lists all current open known issues including a description of the issue, its symptoms and any work-arounds.

No recent issues.

Upcoming ARCHER2 Training

Further details of upcoming training

We always welcome researchers wishing to present their work in a webinar - please contact the Service Desk if you would be interested in presenting your work.

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Recordings of past courses

Recordings of past virtual tutorials