ARC System Changes: 2026-08

ARC systems were offline for regular maintenance between 2026-08-03 and 2026-08-06. The following list is a summary of updates and changes that took place:

  • Tinkercliffs CPU-node BIOS settings change

  • All GPU nodes: Nvidia driver update to 595.71.05 (Nvidia release notes) (except V100 nodes)

  • Cluster changes (Tinkercliffs, Owl, Falcon):

    • update OS to Rocky 9.8

    • update kernel to 5.14.0-687.26.1.el9_8.x86_64

    • update OFED to DOCA OFED 3.2.3,

    • update Slurm to 25.11.6

  • Owl cluster

    • cabling cleanup to improve cooling for air-cooled nodes

    • recabling ethernet fabric

    • prep for FY26 cluster expansion with additional 8,704 CPU cores, 90 TB memory, 32 NVIDIA B200 GPUs

  • Falcon cluster network: update NDR IB switch firmware

  • Storage systems updates

    • VAST (/scratch, /apps)

    • Qumulo (/home)

    • IBM ESS (/projects)

  • Open OnDemand (https://ood.arc.vt.edu)

    • minor version update

    • updated “Remote Desktop” app

      • Updated Alpine to 3.23

      • Updated NoVNC to 1.7.0

      • Now builds in a job via fakeroot

      • MATLAB docs work through browser link redirection through the exo api

      • Added Geany (programmer’s editor); Mousepad remains the default text editor

      • Added Evince (PDF viewer), Meld (visual diff), and FileZilla (SFTP client)

      • Added Drawing (lightweight image editor for annotations, crop, markup)

      • Added Xarchiver as the default archive manager, with right-click archive extraction/creation in the Thunar file manager

      • Clipboard now syncs automatically between your computer and the remote desktop in Chromium-based browsers; Firefox/Safari keep the manual clipboard panel in the sidebar

      • Clipboard falls back to the manual panel if your browser has blocked clipboard permission, instead of not working at all

      • Browser downloads now save to your cluster home (Downloads folder) instead of temporary container storage, so they persist after the session ends

  • ColdFront Account and Allocation management system (https://coldfront.arc.vt.edu)

    • update to v1.1.8

  • Cluster Software. Installed new modules:

    • AlphaFold/3.0.4

    • CUDA/12.8.0

    • CUDA/12.9.1

    • CUDA/13.0.2

    • CUDA/13.3.0

    • CUDA/13.3.1

    • cuDNN/9.23.0.39-CUDA-13.3.0

    • dorado/1.1.1-foss-2024a-CUDA-12.6.0

    • GROMACS/2026.2-foss-2025b

    • GROMACS/2026.2-foss-2025b-CUDA-12.9.1

    • LAMMPS/22Jul2025_update4-foss-2025b-kokkos

    • LAMMPS/22Jul2025_update4-foss-2025b-kokkos-CUDA-12.9.1

    • MPICH/4.3.0-GCC-14.2.0-CUDA-12.8.0

    • NCCL/2.30.4-GCCcore-15.2.0-CUDA-13.3.0

    • ollama/0.32.6-GCCcore-14.3.0-CUDA-13.3.1

    • OSU-Micro-Benchmarks/7.5.2-gompi-2026.1

    • OSU-Micro-Benchmarks/7.5.2-gompi-2026.1-CUDA-13.3.0

    • QuantumESPRESSO/7.5-foss-2025b

    • QuantumESPRESSO/7.5-NVHPC-25.3-CUDA-12.8.0

    • Valgrind/3.27.1-gompi-2024a

    • VASP/6.6.1-intel2025b

    • VASP/6.6.1-foss-2025b-NVHPC-25.9-CUDA-12.9.1