The Update had been rolled out to “improve visibility and readability”
Kyoto University lost a massive 77TB of critical research data from its supercomputer as Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) issued a software update that caused a script to malfunction and delete backup data. As a result, a significant part of the wiped-out data is lost forever.
The error made the Cray/HPE system delete almost all files older than 10 days held in large capacity disc storage backup, rather than just log files. Kyoto University said that 34 million files from 14 research groups had been deleted, and nearly a third of them will not get their data back after the incident which it blamed squarely on the HPE supercomputing system.
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A letter of apology from HPE published by Kyoto University said that it took “100 per cent responsibility” for the issue and the update to a script used on the supercomputer had been rolled out to “improve visibility and readability”.
The team has suspended the backup process on the supercomputer. Still, Kyoto University plans to resume the backup by the end of January after fixing the software problem and the script and taking measures to prevent a recurrence.
