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ARCHER2 Weekly Newsletter

By ARCHER2 Service on August 20, 2025

Tags: newsletters 

Advanced Computing Facility (ACF) Power Outage: 09:00 Friday 29th August – 18:00 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 9am Friday 29th August – 18:00 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 our status page.

We will notify users once the service is available and we expect this to be on Monday 15th September at 18:00.

RDFaaS, /epsrc and /general

The RDFaaS, /epsrc and /general will return to service on 19 September, allowing further work on the file system to be completed.

NVMe scratch file system automated deletions

Automated deletions of the NVMe scratch file system will be disabled on Friday August 22nd and re-enabled on Tuesday October 14th to ensure users are given the normal number of working days before deletion. A reminder will be sent nearer the time.

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

NetDRIVE Annual Community Meeting: 24 to 26 September 2025, Durham

This annual meeting focuses on sustainable research computing for UKRI. There will be limited hybrid support.

The agenda will include keynote presentations to stimulate discussion and breakout sessions in which people can address specific challenges facing the community.

It will be an opportunity for the community to meet eight new champions for transformational change who will be joining the project in September. The meeting will also initiate four key working groups:

  • Ethics and Sustainable Progress
  • Metrics and Reporting
  • Sustainability Clauses in Contracts and Conditionalities
  • Short Format Online Training.

The meeting will bring together people from many areas of UKRI funded research computing.

Keynote speakers:

  • Martin Farley – Associate Director of Environmental Sustainability Programme, UKRI
  • Alastair Basden – Head of COSMA HPC Service, Durham University
  • Adrian Friday SFHEA – Professor of Computing and Sustainability, Lancaster University

Free registration (closing 10 September)

NetDRIVE Early Career Sandpit: 1 and 2 October 2025, Birmingham (In-person)

As part of our second funding call (total value up to £1m, with £200k reserved for projects led by early career investigators), we are hosting a two-day residential sandpit for early career researchers interested in applying.

Funding call details

Applicants should complete and submit the application form to netDRIVEOxford@gmail.com by 10 September. Applications will be evaluated, and around 25 selected participants will be invited to the event to develop full research proposals.

Early career sandpit template

ARCHER2 Image and Video competition 2025

Share your images and videos to support excellence and promote the contribution of ARCHER2 to outstanding research. The winner of the competition will be awarded £250.

The winning image or video, along with a selection of other entries, will also be featured on the ARCHER2 website and in EPCC and ARCHER2 publications. Credit will be given to the entrant in all cases. Key Details

  • Competition Opens: 29th July 2025
  • Submission Deadline: 5 September 2025
  • Judging: September/October 2025
  • Prizes:
    • Best image : £150
    • Best video : £150
    • Best early career researcher submission : £150
    • Overall winner, selected from the above three winners : additional £100

The ARCHER2 Image and Video Competition is an event for all users of ARCHER2 to share their images or videos of “ARCHER2 Enabling Research”

Full details and entry forms

Green software use on HPC

Birmingham, 22 October 2025 10:00 - 15:30 BST

This lesson introduces environmental sustainability principles in the context of high performance computing (HPC) systems. Understanding the scale of emissions from different sources is critical to being able to make changes to work in a more environmentally sustainable way. This lesson will give you the ability to understand emissions arising from use of HPC system and how to quantify them. We will use practical examples and real data from an existing HPC facility to illustrate the concepts. By the end of this lesson you should:

  • Be able to understand the concept of carbon efficiency and how it relates to energy efficiency including cases where energy efficiency can be at odds with carbon efficiency
  • Know about how HPC systems potentially reduce emissions
  • Understand carbon intensity of electricity generation and the implications for carbon aware use of HPC
  • Appreciate the embodied emissions associated with HPC hardware and how they impact carbon aware use of HPC
  • Be aware of the frameworks used to measure and report on carbon emissions and how the terms used in these frameworks map onto HPC
  • Gain practical advice on how you can measure and improve the carbon efficiency of your use of HPC

We use the UK National Supercomputing Service, ARCHER2 as an example throughout this lesson but the principles and learning should be applicable to any HPC system. Target Audience:

This lesson is aimed at all stakeholders in HPC use (e.g. researchers, RSEs, funders). No knowledge of environmental sustainability principles is assumed.

Full details and registration

National Federated Compute Services NetworkPlus

Autumn Conference : Edinburgh, Monday 22nd and Tuesday 23rd September

The National Federated Compute Services NetworkPlus aims to build collaboration and knowledge exchange for federating across the stakeholder communities that use and provide computational services. A key objective is to produce a roadmap for the future of federated compute services in the UK.

Please join us at the autumn conference in Edinburgh on Monday 22nd and Tuesday 23rd September. Registration

Further details regarding the 2nd flexible funding call will be available at the meeting including a mini-sandpit.

NetDRIVE Second Call for Community Projects and Champions

The NetDRIVE 2nd call for community projects has been published, offering over £1m for activities contributing towards sustainable research computing for UKRI:

  • Guidance and application forms
  • The total budget for community projects will be £1m (100% FEC, with projects being awarded 80% FEC).
  • The 2nd call will have two components: around 20% of funds will be reserved for projects led by early career applicants (submissions of full proposals close October 24th , but applications to join a sandpit event should be submitted by September 10th) and the remainder will be open to all (submissions close October 10th).
  • There is also funding in this call for 3 champions with social science qualifications, with two of these positions reserved for early career applicants.

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