Scientific Computing Services system administrators discovered that recently acquired Dell R720 servers were experiencing delays of up to 7 minutes while booting RHEL6. The R720 is the preferred hardware platform for several scientific computing services. SCS worked with Dell and Red Hat to resolve this server performance issue which was traced to the RAID controller card. Dell provided a firmware update for the controller which eliminated the delay. This fix will enable servers to run with optimum efficiency.
Scientific Computing Services responded to an escalated request from MCC staff during the evening of Friday, January 17. Response time on a storage server had degraded due a failed disk drive. SCS staff were able to address the immediate problem and work is continuing to alleviate some of the long-standing problems with arrays on this system. Maintaining adequate response time on this server is critical to MCC's mission.