Change Log

Owned by Giang Rudderham
Last updated: Mar 26, 2024 by Cody Johnson

In this page:


March 23, 2024

  • Added new GPUs: 8 NVIDIA A30 and 12 NVIDIA L4
  • Added 5 new-generation compute nodes with faster CPU. Each node has 128 CPU threads and 1.5TB RAM.

December 27-29, 2023

  • Migration of home directories of IDAS research users. Users will not notice any difference in using their IDAS home directories. The new storage system will give more consistent performance, free up compute resources for users, and streamline future maintenance. For more details, please see this article.
  • General updates and bug fixes

November 1, 2023

  • Transitioned to a new authentication service to reduce authentication-related issues for users
  • Updated IDAS URL to https://idas.uiowa.edu/ for consistent branding. Research users will be automatically redirected to this new URL when they log in from the previous URL. No changes will be made to class instances until after the end of the Fall 2023 semester
  • Optimized the wording on the Server Options form for research users
  • General updates and bug fixes

August 9-11, 2023

  • Added Python 3.11, R 4.3.1, and Julia 1.9.2
  • Updated JupyterHub to version 4
  • Fixed bugs with how the LSS paths in the Server Options form are handled
  • Prepared IDAS for additional storage for new home directories
  • General bug fixes and security patches
  • Python 3.7 reached its end of life on June 27, 2023. Since Python 3.7 is no longer being maintained by the official Python project, our team will cease to support and maintain the Python 3.7 instances in IDAS.

May 17, 2023

  • Updated IDAS nodes
  • Config updates
  • Updated NVIDIA drivers
  • Preparations for new IDAS home drive systems

December 28-30, 2022

  • R 4.2.2, Python 3.10, and Julia 1.8.3 are now available.
  • Users will be able to create, open, and edit CSV files in IDAS. For more information, please see Editing CSV Files on IDAS. 
  • The default interface on IDAS has changed from Jupyter Notebook to JupyterLab.  This change only affects the default interface at log in. Both Jupyter Notebook and JupyterLab will still be available on IDAS, and users can easily switch between Jupyter Notebook and JupyterLab. For more information, please see Jupyter Notebook and JupyterLab.

November 2, 2022

  • Security patches
  • General updates and bug fixes

August 10, 2022

  • Security patches
  • General updates and bug fixes

May 18, 2022

  • Added new GPUs: 4 NVIDIA A10 and 4 NVIDIA A30
  • Added 2 new-generation compute nodes with faster CPU. Each node has 128 CPU threads and 1TB RAM.
  • Upgraded Jupyter Hub to version 2.2.2
  • Better logging so that Research Services staff can better troubleshoot support requests.
  • We can now add new language version and instance type to IDAS without service downtime.

February 9, 2022

  • Julia 1.7.1 is now available
  • IDAS was prepared for future expansion
  • General updates and bug fixes

December 27-30, 2021

  • IDAS infrastructure has been migrated to new hardware, which will improve service stability.
  • Linux system software has been updated to current versions.

August 11 - August 12, 2021

  • R 4.1 is now available

  • Julia 1.6 is now available

  • Increased maximum RAM that can be requested to 512GB

January 6 - January 7, 2021

  • Security updates
  • Better error handling in the Server Options form
  • Python 3.9 made available
  • Jupyterhub updated to 1.3.0
  • Jupyterlab updated to 2.2.9
  • Jupyter Notebooks updated to 6.1.6

August 12 - August 13, 2020

  • Python 3.7 and 3.8 are now available. Python 3.6 will remain an option.
  • R 4.0.2 is now available. R 3.6.1 will remain an option.
  • Julia 1.3.1, 1.4.2 and 1.5.0 are now available. Julia 1.2.0 will remain an option.
  • 4 additional GPUs have been added.

June 26, 2020

  • Resolve an issue that prevents users from connecting to dedicated LSS shares
  • Users can now spawn an instance with RStudio directly. 
    • Please select the RStudio option in the "Server Options" form:



  • Users no longer need to source .bashrc every time they work with conda

April 1, 2020

  • Instance memory limit will be raised to 256GB
  • Julia users no longer need to specify depot paths
  • You can now specify sub-directories of LSS shares when spawning an instance
  • General updates and bug fixes

March 17, 2020

  • RStudio Classroom has been moved to a multi-server environment. Sessions are now evenly distributed across all the nodes resulting in less resource contention.
  • We have also doubled the amount of compute resources available to RStudio Classroom.

December 26, 2019

New features deployed on this date include:

1. New Spawner form 

A sneak peak of our new Spawner form is below.

Please note that Python, R, and Julia will each have its own container image. For example, to start a Julia instance, please select one of the three options for Julia under IDAS Image in the Spawner form. 


2. LSS and Argon Home access

Users will be able to access their Large Scale Storage (LSS) and Argon homes from IDAS.

More information about Large Scale Storage can be found at https://its.uiowa.edu/lss

Documentation on the Cluster Systems can be found at https://uiowa.atlassian.net/wiki/display/hpcdocs/Cluster+Systems+Documentation


3. RStudio available for research use

RStudio will be available for research with this update. To start an RStudio instance, please select one of the three options for R under IDAS Image in the Spawner form.

 

Doing so will launch an R instance. In order to launch RStudio, click New, then select the RStudio option.

This will launch an RStudio session, which looks very similar to the local version of RStudio.


Please contact Giang Rudderham and Cody B Johnson at research-computing@uiowa.edu with any questions or concerns.