by Paul Edmon July 23, 2026 Abstract With the advent of Nvidia deprioritizing 64-bit floating point performance, another metric is needed to fairly weight GPU performance for the sake of fairshare accounting. This blog post describes the rationale behind the new method which is to take the theoretical peak performance in whatever category is the largest and then normalize it…
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RSpace Support Group Pilot Project Report
By Sarah Marchese - FASRC Research Data Manager - July 8, 2026 The RSpace Support Group pilot project was launched in July 2025 to assess awareness, use, and support of RSpace, an FAS-supported electronic lab notebook (ELN) available to Harvard researchers. Representatives from Harvard Library, University Research Computing (URC), the Office of the Vice Provost for Research (OVPR), and FAS…
2026 MGHPCC power downtime June 15-18, 2026
The yearly power downtime at our Holyoke data center, MGHPCC, has been scheduled by the facility. This year's power downtime will take place June 15th - 18th, 2026. There will be no June monthly maintenance as a result. Since the facility will be powered down for two days this year, we will not be performing the usual maintenance tasks. That…
FAS Research Computing Storage Modernization Initiative – Nov 2025
This message was sent to all active FASRC account holders on Nov. 13, 2025 Harvard FAS Research Computing Website | Documentation | Training | Status FAS Research Computing (FAS RC), with support from the FAS Division of Science, will be transitioning to a new storage infrastructure in the coming months. Upcoming changes: Modernizes and consolidates FAS RC storage systems,…
FASRC Collaboration With Starfish
FASRC has worked closely with Starfish to create a system allowing not only accurate storage cost recovery, but to allow researchers and PIs an insight into their storage usage and tools for managing that storage.:th You can read more in a two-part blog series from Starfish: Chapter One: How Harvard Faculty of Arts and Science Research Computing and Starfish built…
FASRC Adds New H200 Partition to Cannon
Over the past several years FASRC has seen remarkable growth in GPU demand. The gpu partition has been regularly oversubscribed with near constant 100% utilization. Looking at future trends, GPU computation will only become more popular. With this in mind, FASRC is pleased to announce the new gpu_h200 partition on Cannon. This partition is made up for following: 24 Lenovo…
2025 Compute OS Upgrade
It is time for our annual operating system (OS) upgrade for our two clusters, Cannon and FASSE. Unlike previous years we have separated the upgrade from our annual power outage. This was to make it easier for FASRC staff to deal with any unforeseen issues coming out of the power outage and to simplify the power on process. In addition…
2025 MGHPCC power downtime June 2-4, 2025
UPDATE: June 5th 9am - Downtime is complete, Return to full service The yearly power downtime at our Holyoke data center, MGHPCC, has been scheduled. This year's power downtime will take place on Tuesday June 3, 2025. Monday June 2nd - Power-down begins at 9AM Tuesday June 3rd - Power out at MGHPCC Wednesday June 4th - Maintenance tasks and then power-up begins…
Boston Data Center Move – Jan. 21-23, 2025 (Phase 2)
FAS Research Computing will be moving floors in our Boston data center in early 2025. This will require at least two downtimes to accomplish. The first phase will be completed Jan 12-13, 2025. Phase 2 will take place Jan 21-23 and will be less disruptive and will not require a cluster shutdown. Phase 2: The cluster will be online. Some…
Boston Data Center Move – Jan. 12-14, 2025 (Phase 1)
FAS Research Computing will be moving floors in our Boston data center in early 2025. This will require at least two downtimes to accomplish. The most impactful will be the first move of our Boston Isilon storage which houses all user home directories. Phase 1: The cluster will be offline until Tuesday 1/14. This first move will begin at 4PM …
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