Rolling Upgrade from RHEL7 to RHEL8

HiPerGator OS Upgrade: RHEL-7 → RHEL-8

HiPerGator is beginning rolling upgrade process from Red Hat Enterprise Linux version 7 (RHEL-7) to version 8 (RHEL-8). The upgraded software environment will include updates to important components including, but not limited to, NVIDIA GPU drivers, CUDA, communication libraries, and compilers.

Some programs/workflows will run in the updated software environment without any modification, and some will require recompilation or adaptation.

What will happen

On August 16, 2023, a subset of HiPerGator compute resources will go online with the updated software environment. On the same day, a new login node pool will be introduced as hpg-el8.rc.ufl.edu that runs the updated software environment. If you need to rebuild your application, you can do it here.

Over the next 6-7 weeks, additional compute resources will be upgraded at a steady rate until they are all upgraded. Once more than half of the compute resources are upgraded, the new login nodes will become default as hpg.rc.ufl.edu.

We recommend moving to RHEL-8 at your earliest convenience.

Choosing RHEL-7 or RHEL-8

Using the '--constraint' SLURM directive, it is possible to submit jobs specifically targeting RHEL-7 with '--constraint=el7' or RHEL-8 with '--constraint=el8'. If neither is specified, the scheduler will not consider operating system in placing your jobs and you may get either or a mix depending on the number of requested nodes.

E.g.

#SBATCH --constraint=el8

How long will RHEL-7 systems remain available on HiPerGator?

At this time, we expect to complete the upgrade process on September 20, 2023. If you have concerns about access to RHEL-7 systems on HiPerGator after September 20, 2023, please contact us as soon as possible to discuss.