Following good data practices makes scratch more performant and more useful for all users. By keeping master copies of important data in backed‑up storage, staging only the inputs and outputs you need for active jobs into scratch, and promptly moving valuable results back to a persistent location when your work completes, you help keep scratch fast, responsive, and available for high‑throughput workloads across the system.

To support this, we’ve updated our scratch documentation with clearer guidance and policies, including:

• An emphasis on scratch as temporary, high‑performance workspace, not long‑term storage.
• Clearer explanation of purge behavior and age limits (including that files may be removed at any time after they become eligible).
• Removal of legacy “purge warning email” language; users should no longer expect email notifications before files are purged.
• Explicit guidance that using tools like touch or other methods to defeat purge mechanisms is a violation of Acceptable Research Resource Use.
• Practical tips and examples for staging data into scratch, monitoring file ages with tools such as purgelist , and moving important results back to Data Depot or Fortress.

Scratch filesystems are engineered for capacity and performance and are not protected by backup technology; some types of failures can result in permanent data loss. If losing a file in scratch would significantly impact your research, that file should have a current copy in a more durable storage location such as Data Depot (for active data) or Fortress (for long‑term archival).

You can review the updated scratch storage guidance here: https://www.rcac.purdue.edu/policies/scratchpurge

If you have questions about how to adapt your workflows or where to store particular data, please contact us at rcac-help@purdue.edu and we’ll be happy to help.

Users may see failures connecting via Windows/Samba and jobs are affected because all clusters are currently paused while recovery work proceeds. Our engineers are working with the storage platform to restore service; we will share further updates as we learn more.

**Issue: **Some users may not see Microsoft Authenticator push prompts unless they manually open the app. This can cause sign-ins to time out.

Workaround: If you do not see a push notification, open the Microsoft Authenticator app and approve the pending request. Also, please verify that your default sign-in method is set to ‘App based Authentication – notification’ You can follow the steps in this Knowledge Base article to check and update your settings: https://service.purdue.edu/TDClient/32/Purdue/KB/ArticleDet?ID=1788

Still Need Help? - Contact us at rcac-help@purdue.edu

Beginning May 11, 2026, RCAC will move from Duo Mobile to Microsoft Authenticator for logging in to Purdue’s research computing and supercomputing systems.

To ensure uninterrupted access, please complete the steps below before May 11.

What you need to do:

Enroll in Microsoft Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) using the Microsoft Authenticator app (if you have not already)

Set your default sign-in method in Microsoft MFA to your preferred method

After May 11, Duo Mobile will no longer work for accessing RCAC systems.

Please contact rcac-help@purdue.edu If you have any questions or need help.

We will provide an update by noon, April 28 or sooner as work progresses.

All RCAC systems and Research Network services will remain unavailable during this extended window.

We appreciate your continued patience as we complete these critical upgrades to improve RCAC infrastructure reliability and performance.

For assistance, questions, or concerns, please contact rcac-help@purdue.edu.

The Weber cluster will be unavailable Wednesday, March 18, 2026 from 8:00am - 5:00pm EDT for scheduled maintenance. The cluster will return to full production by 5:00pm EDT.

During this time, Weber will have its operating system patched.

Any Slurm jobs which request a walltime which would take them past Wednesday, March 18, 2026 at 8:00am EDT will not start and will remain in the queue until after the maintenance is completed.

Due to the outage, some jobs on Gilbreth did not requeue automatically. Users should check the status of any jobs that were running early this morning and resubmit them if needed.

** How does this change impact you? **

Login to Weber: The change will simplify logging into Weber. Weber users currently need to authenticate to Luna VPN or VDI with Luna credentials, and then additionally authenticate to Weber with BoilerAD credentials. After the change, users will just need to use their Luna password when logging into Weber resources, including via ThinlLinc, SMB, and SSH. Luna password will be the same password as is currently used to log into the VPN.

ThinlLinc: Anyone accessing Weber via ThinLinc directly from their endpoint will need to switch to using ThinLinc from a Luna Desktop.

Data Egress: File egress will be disabled, and users will need to submit a ticket each time they wish to transfer files outside weber. Egress to Apricon drives will no longer be supported on regular endpoints.

During the maintenance window, job scheduling though Slurm and network drive mounts of Weber storage will be unavailable.

These changes position Purdue to meet the requirements of CMMC Level 2 compliance and will be crucial for continuation of various grants and contracts.

Please reach out to rcac-help@purdue.edu? if you have any questions.

Impact To You: At this time, you may notice latency or brief disruptions when accessing certain on-campus or external resources, especially during peak usage periods.

We appreciate your patience while we work to fully resolve the underlying problem and restore normal network performance. We will provide an update by 5:00PM EST today or sooner.

System monitoring has identified an issue where heavy job activity was overloading the Data Depot filesystem used by the clusters and Globus.

You may see the following impacts:

• Globus transfers to and from Depot collections may fail, stall, or run much more slowly than usual.
• Globus logins may be slow or occasionally fail when accessing Depot endpoints.
• Jobs on RCAC clusters that read from or write to Depot may experience slow file access, delayed directory listings, or timeouts.

Our engineers are investigating the high load from a large number of concurrent jobs and are working to reduce the impact on Depot, Globus, and cluster workloads. Existing jobs will continue to run, but any that are heavily Depot‑I/O‑bound may run more slowly or see I/O errors until performance improves. We will provide another update by 5:00PM EST or sooner if the issue is resolved.

Research Computing staff members will monitor the status of all computing and data resources in an effort to ensure continuous availability.

Research Computing staff members will monitor the ticketing system throughout the holiday period and answer critical issues and problems. Non-critical user issues and questions will be addressed beginning January 5th, 2026. There will also be no coffee hour consultations during this break.

Scratch file purging (on community clusters with scratch space) will continue as normal during the break, so be sure to archive your files in scratch storage. This does not apply to Data Depot or home directories -- only scratch storage.

Have a wonderful break, everyone, and we look forward to great things in the new year!

We will provide an update by 2:00 PM EST or sooner.

During this time, Weber will have its operating system patched.

Any Slurm jobs which request a walltime which would take them past Wednesday, October 22nd, 2025 at 8:00am EDT will not start and will remain in the queue until after the maintenance is completed.

Thank you!

Update: 3:00PM, EDT: Systems returning but queues are still paused on all clusters except for Bell and Hammer. Some clusters are waiting for full cooling to come fully back online. Next update at 4:00PM, EDT, or when all systems are returned to service.

Update: 2:30PM, EDT: Systems are steadily coming back online. Queues are still paused. Next update at 3:00PM, EDT.

The Rosen Center is currently experiencing an outage on all clusters due to a widespread power outage event on the Purdue West Lafayette Campus.

Currently engineers are bringing all services back up. Scheduling on all clusters will be resumed once services have stabilized.

We expect services to back shortly. We will update on the situation at 2:30PM, EDT.