---
title: "Upgrades at CARC support UNM research"
description: "Following a week of downtime in late May, the UNM Center for Advanced Research Computing is back online with a number of improvements to its systems."
type: News
tags:
  - News
date: "2019-06"
generated:
  by: "process:scripts/port_legacy_pages.py"
  at: "2026-09-10T00:00:00Z"
sources:
  - id: carc-web
    resource: "https://carc.unm.edu/news--events/News/carc-upgrades.html"
    title: "Upgrades at CARC support UNM research (carc.unm.edu)"
    author: "team:unm-carc"
---

# Upgrades at CARC support UNM research

<p class="carc-byline">June 2019</p>

![a view inside of the UPS during maintenance](/assets/carc-upgrades-ups-upgrades.jpg)

*a view inside of the UPS during maintenance*

Following a week of downtime in late May, the UNM Center for Advanced Research
Computing is back online with a number of improvements to its systems. The
changes included upgrades to CARC’s data center power facilities, storage
systems, network infrastructure, and software services.

First, the Center completed critical maintenance on one of the uninterruptible
power supply (UPS) units that protects the machine room, including Wheeler,
Xena, Taos, and Gibbs, in addition to the Chama and RSC storage systems. The
UPS assures that CARC systems stay online without service interruption during
a power outage. If the power outage lasts longer than the UPS can handle, CARC
systems will also automatically shut down safely.

CARC staff also deployed Chama, a new NetApp enterprise storage system that
replaces the old Serrano home directory fileserver. “Compared to the previous
system, Chama adds many new features to help UNM researchers, including data
compression, encryption, user and group quotas, snapshots, off-site disaster
recovery backups, and ease of management,” said Network and Storage Specialist
Hussein Al-Azzawi. Users requiring additional space beyond the space that CARC
provides free of charge can also now purchase dedicated storage space for
their projects.

In addition, the Center finished upgrading its core network infrastructure to
10Gb Ethernet, including making 10Gb Ethernet the default connection to all
CARC HPC and storage systems. This will provide UNM researchers faster
connectivity to CARC systems, and also help researchers import and export data
more quickly from CARC systems.

CARC staff also switched to a new [help ticket
system](https://carcsupport.selfservice.vivantio.com/Content/Index/327){target=_blank}
called Vivantio. Compared to the previous AIRS ticket system, Vivantio
provides a modern web interface to for handling service requests. It allows
researchers to more easily submit and track their help tickets through the web
portal and submit feedback after the ticket is closed. Behind the scenes, the
new system allows CARC staff to easily assign and track tickets, and to
monitor response times to researcher support requests.

Finally, the Galles general use supercomputer was retired during the
maintenance period. Galles was built from over 200 used Dell desktop computers
acquired from all over campus, in collaboration with IT and University
Libraries. Galles was an important resource for supporting campus research
computing needs for many years, but was increasingly difficult to maintain and
most Galles users were migrated to newer CARC systems.

“Overall, the goal of these changes was to dramatically improve the quality of
service and support that CARC provides to UNM researchers,” said CARC Director
Patrick Bridges. To learn more about using CARC resources, visit our Getting
Started webpage.