User Updates

Planned TAPIS & Portal Maintenance 6-23-2026

  • Published 

      We will be performing both a TAPIS and Portal maintenance to upgrade our infrastructure and underlying software. During this time, TAPIS-related systems as well as the TACC User Portal will be temporarily unavailable.These updates are essential to ensure the continued reliability and security of our software. We understand that your time is valuable and apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.Questions? Submit a ticket: https://tacc.utexas.edu/portal/ticketsDetailsDate: Tuesday, 6/23/2026Time: 8:00 AM to 9:30 AM (Estimated duration: 90 minutes)

      Ranch Maintenance June 23 2026

      • Published 

          Ranch will undergo maintenance Tuesday, June 23rd, 2026 from 9:00 AM to 3:00 PM (CST). Software upgrades and hardware maintenance will be performed during this time. 

          The Future of Frontera and Horizon

          • Published 

              Hi All,It's hard to believe that in a few weeks, Frontera will have been available for *seven* full years, far beyond its predicted lifespan. It's also hard to believe its replacement, Horizon, is taking shape on our datacenter floor. I'm pleased to be able to say that, with the cooperation of our storage vendor, we will be able to run Frontera on a "best effort" basis for a bit longer. We intend to leave the queues open until *September 30th* 2026 and will adjust end dates of allocations accordingly. When I say "intend" -- there are certain things we can't get replacements for any more, and some kinds of failures that would require "heroic measures" might cause us to shut things down a bit sooner, but we believe we can get through September (with login nodes and filesystems available a few months longer to migrate data). We can make some limited supplemental allocations available through that time, though many of you have a lot of time left to burn. Vista will keep operating as well. At the same time, we are bringing up Horizon -- we have several thousand GPUs on the floor in various states of bring up and testing (with still more to be delivered), along with a few hundred storage servers. We have started taking applications for the "early user" period - we will start reviewing those next week but keep the application period open for the next month. We will be making access available in the next couple of months, scaling up through the summer. The GPU portion of the machine will go live first -- the CPU portion won't be delivered to us until late fall. We will do a full call across all tracks for 2027, but for now, the early operations allocation will be the way to get time on the machine. Login nodes will be generally available in July to start things like data migration from Frontera. This does mean we will have some gap on the CPU side of things when Frontera shuts down, though our GPU capability will be far greater. In the interim, we have some CPU nodes on Vista and will also have Stampede3 (available through ACCESS) and Lonestar6 available with CPU nodes. If you haven't gotten ready to port to Horizon yet -- you may want to give Vista a try. The software stack will look very similar to Vista -- anything that compiles and runs there should move trivially to Horizon. Please also keep in mind if you haven't migrated your data from the old tape system to the new Ranch system yet, you have about 6 months left (and tape migrations take time -- don't save a petabyte until the end!). Keep an eye out for a few webinars and training sessions over the summer to introduce the new systems as everything is completed. While we are sorry to see Frontera go after 8 million jobs and countless new discoveries, we think you will love Horizon! Thanks,DanP.S. To request additional time and resources, please submit using the drop-down menu next to your allocation in TXRAS here: https://submit-tacc.xras.org/requests  

              TAP Connection Issues May 6 2026

              • Published  Updated

                  We are aware of an issue for users of the TAP Portal (https://tap.tacc.utexas.edu/jobs/) regarding connection errors and the unavailability of ports. Our administrators are working to resolve the issue. We will update this post once the issue is resolved. Thank you, The TACC Team

                  TACC Resource Availibility

                  • Published 

                      Due to security updates, all TACC resources will be affected and will be temporarily unavailable as the patches are applied. Jobs currently running will finish, and jobs currently in the queues will be held until the updates have completed. Login nodes will be intermittently unavailable during this process and this will affect queue wait times. We appreciate your patience as we perform this necessary maintenance. Please refer to this announcement for updates.

                      Horizon System Now Accepting Early Operation

                      • Published 

                          TACC is pleased to announce that we are now accepting LRAC submissions for the Horizon supercomputer. Horizon’s Leadership Class Computing capacity is funded by the National Science Foundation and supports the “discovery at the frontiers of science and engineering…through large scale simulation, data analysis, and artificial intelligence applications.”Horizon provides an order of magnitude performance increase over the previous Frontera system and will enable researchers to advance the state of science in every field.Currently, we are only accepting large scale LRAC requests, but smaller research allocations and startup requests will be available in the future.Please review the submission guide for detailed instructions on how to proceed:https://lccf.tacc.utexas.edu/allocations We look forward to working with you!Thank you, The TACC Team

                          Stampede3 Maintenance April 22 2026

                          • Published  Updated

                              Stampede3 will undergo maintenance April 22nd from 9:00 AM to 3:00 PM CST. We will be applying updates to the OPA-400 network alongside cluster-wide changes to our batch scheduler at this time. 

                              Ranch Maintenance April 28, 2026

                              • Published  Updated

                                  The Ranch archive system will be unavailable on Tuesday, April 28th from 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM CDT. Software updates will be applied during this maintenance window

                                  DNS Issues Impacting Authentication

                                  • Published  Updated

                                      We are currently experiencing DNS service issues and are actively investigating the cause. At this time, authentication services are being impacted. We will provide updates as more information becomes available.

                                      Ranch Data Migration Reminder

                                      • Published 

                                          This is a reminder that, as part of the construction of the NSF Leadership Class Computing Facility, the hardware underlying the TACC "Ranch" tape archive system is being replaced. This new Ranch system allows us to expand the capacity of the archive to an exabyte and beyond over the next several year. If there is data in the archive that you wish to keep on the new system, you will need to move it to the new hardware.Please carefully review the message below for important information on timelines, where to find your old data, where to write you new data, and directions on migrating:TimelineSeptember 30th, 2025: New Ranch hardware became available to general usersNovember 1st, 2026: End of Service (EOS), Old Ranch hardware will be removed from service.To be clear, you, or someone on your project, will need to migrate your data from the OldRanchData directory (a read-only mount of the old Ranch system) to your new directory, or project space. Data that is not copied to the new Ranch space WILL NOT be available after the end of 2026. For detailed instructions on what users need to do, please view our migration guide here: https://docs.tacc.utexas.edu/hpc/ranch-migration-2025/For very large data migrations (>= 1PB) or other special use cases, please contact the support team for assistance: https://tacc.utexas.edu/portal/ticketsWe are halfway through the migration period, so, if you haven't started migrating data, please start as soon as is convenient.

                                          Stampede3 Maintenance March 31

                                          • Published  Updated

                                              Upgrades will be performed on the SPR queue on Tuesday, March 31st from 9:00 AM until 1:00PM as we upgrade the switch firmware and deploy new HFI drivers to further improve stability and performance on the OPA-400 fabric. Only the SPR queue will be affected, jobs will continue to run for the rest of the cluster.

                                              Ranch Emergency Maintenance

                                              • Published  Updated

                                                  Ranch archival service at TACC lost one of its critical disk arrays this morning and we were forced to stop all user process on login and gridftp services in order to prevent data corruption.We are working with the vendor to resolve this issue at the moment.  We will update with ETA, but it will be close to a day before we restore full service.

                                                  Ranch Status Monday February 16, 2026

                                                  • Published  Updated

                                                      The Ranch system front end disk is currently in Read-Only mode due to a hardware error. We are working with the vendor to resolve the issue as soon as possible. We will update this announcement as soon as the system is fully functional again. Please do not hesitate to reach out via the ticket system if you have any questions.

                                                      Authentication Outage Thursday February 19

                                                      • Published 

                                                          TACC's production PrivacyIdea (pidea01.tacc.utexas.edu) will be unavailable for maintenance.  This will effectively make all logins unusable from 6:00PM to 8:00PM Thursday, February 19.

                                                          Vista Maintenance 12 February 2026

                                                          • Published  Updated

                                                              Vista will not be available from 7:00 AM to 10:00 PM CST on Thursday, February 12, 2026. System maintenance will be performed during this time. 

                                                              Stampede3 Maintenance January 2026

                                                              • Published  Updated

                                                                  Stampede3 will not be available from 7:00 AM to 8:00 PM (CST) on Tuesday, January 27th , 2026. System maintenance will be performed during this time.

                                                                  TACC VPN Maintenance Thursday January 15

                                                                  • Published 

                                                                      The TACC VPN infrastructure will be taken down for maintenance from 7PM to 9PM on Thursday, January 15th. VPN maintenance will be performed during this time.

                                                                      Ranch Status 15 January 2026

                                                                      • Published  Updated

                                                                          The Ranch system at TACC is dealing with a bug in the archival management software, which has been causing server instability since Monday the 12th of January.  We are working with the vendor to get a software patch and perform an upgrade as soon as possible. Users may experience hangs on and some issues recalling data from tape. We apologize for the inconvenience and will post an update as soon as the issue is resolved.

                                                                          TACC Account Eligibility Changes

                                                                          • Published 

                                                                              TACC is updating its account policies concerning institutional affiliation and email address requirements. These changes align with NSF guidance and ensure compliance with federal funding requirements. Beginning 1/6/2026, all users will be required to have an approved institutional affiliation with an associated email address. For example, if you are affiliated with The University of Texas at Austin, you will need to have a utexas.edu email address associated with your account. Generic domains such as gmail.com, yahoo.com, or qq.com are prohibited. Accounts with these types of domains will be deactivated and users will be required to login to https://accounts.tacc.utexas.edu with their current TACC username and password to update their email address and institution. If you run into an issues while updating your account, please feel free to submit a ticket here: https://tacc.utexas.edu/about/help/. Thanks, The TACC Accounts Team

                                                                              Ranch Maintenance 1/5/2026

                                                                              • Published 

                                                                                  The Ranch archive system (both new and old) will be unavailable on Sunday, January 4th at 8PM until Monday, January 5th at 5PM, due to power work that is taking place on the building that houses the old tape library system(The Commons Building)

                                                                                  Winter Break

                                                                                  • Published 

                                                                                      TACC will be observing the University Winter Break schedule and be operating with essential personnel only from December 23rd - January 4th. During this time, allocation requests, account requests, and tickets will not be reviewed or processed. All services will resume normal operations on January 5th.We wish you all a wonderful holiday season and look forward to working with you in the new year! Thank you, The TACC Team