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This page contains upcoming and recent news, announcements and other information.
This page formerly contained some information that belonged on the FAQ page. Apologies if you've been directed to this page in error; please see the FAQ for more information.
Scheduled maintenance
We have scheduled maintenance two to four times a year.
Two weeks before scheduled maintenance, the Slurm scheduler will begin holding submitted jobs that could run past the beginning of the maintenance window (shorter jobs will run normally). If you see a status like (ReqNodeNotAvail, Reserved for maintenance) for a job in the output of the squeue command, that's what's going on.
December 22-23, 2025 maintenance scheduled
Unity will be unavailable from 8:00 pm on December 22 to 8:00 pm on December 23 for scheduled maintenance. Actual work on Unity is not expected to take 24 hours but this coincides with network changes that OTDI is making; this gives us one longer downtime instead of two shorter (but just as disruptive) downtimes.
Jobs whose requested time limit would extend into the scheduled maintenance period are being held until after maintenance is complete.
In addition to operating system and hardware patches, we will be updating the Slurm scheduling software; this will allow us to manage resources more efficiently. We will also be migrating to a new module system; see below for more details.
Change to module system for application software
We are moving to a shared software stack between the Unity cluster and all College of Arts and Sciences (ASC) Linux workstations. This provides full compatibility across all College compute resources, ensuring that the code you develop on a local ASC workstation will run identically on Unity compute nodes.
Accessing Legacy Modules
Because we are changing how software is organized, your existing module load commands may fail initially. If you encounter an issue with a piece of software not loading, you can restore access to the legacy modules by adding the following line to your interactive login scripts (e.g., .bashrc) or your SLURM submission scripts:
module use /fs/project/unity-lmod-2025/share/lmodfiles/Core
Note: Using this command allows your environment to "see" and access the legacy software modules while we work on the transition.
Software Migration Requests & Timeline
Our goal is to move all necessary tools into the new unified system. If you find yourself needing to use the legacy path, please let us know by submitting a request here:
👉 ASC Software Migration Request Portal
Please Note the Timeline: Submitting a request allows our team to identify which legacy packages are still in use so we can make them permanently available on the new system. Actual migrations of these requested legacy modules will take place after the University's recess, beginning January 5, 2026.
Thank you for your patience as we work to provide a more consistent and powerful computing environment for the College.
December 17, 2024 maintenance scheduled
Downtime begins at 10:00 pm on December 16 to accommodate OTDI switch upgrades before Unity maintenance begins at 6:00 am on December 17.
- SOFTWARE UPDATES – new versions will become the defaults for various software packages via LMOD
- OS updates – new kernel and security updates (RHEL8.10+)
- Firewall and Network switch updates (ASC fileservers will be unavailable)
- SLURM scheduler updated to 23.11.10
May 6, 2024 maintenance complete
- The operating system of all nodes, including login and compute nodes, updated to RedHat 8.9.
- Home directories moved to our new storage system (project space has been on this storage system for several months).
- New default versions of several modules.
- A number of compiled programs have been affected by the update from RedHat 7.9 to 8.9. If you see a new error about a missing library, this may be the problem. Please contact us for a fix.
- R/4.4.0. Around the time of this maintenance, a vulnerability in versions of R earlier than 4.4.0 was reported. Most of the existing versions of R on Unity are affected by the missing library error (above). Until we have a clear path forward, we encourage use of 4.4.0. If that's a problem for you, please contact us. See also OSC's statement on the issue.
December 28, 2023 maintenance complete
- Operating system update to RedHat 7.9
- Kernel updates
- BIOS updates
- New version of Slurm
- New CUDA drivers
- New defaults for applications with new versions added since last maintenance.
August 21, 2023 maintenance complete
Updates and rolling reboots of all nodes.
January 5, 2023 maintenance complete
- RedHat patches and updates to RedHat7.9
- NVIDIA CUDA driver 525.78.01
- Mathematica 13.1 default
- Matlab 2022b default
- New Project storage is now available to all customers. All existing customers (past 5 years) with shares located in /fs/project/$name have been upgraded to the new storage environment. The new storage cluster has 4x10Gb uplinks to the Unity cluster and allows much faster data transfers. If you have a need for additional storage, please contact asctech@osu.edu.