Japan’s Kyoto University, published a communique yesterday saying that on 14-16 December, their supercomputer’s backup system accidentally deleted a large amount of data. And seems they lost data because of the computer manufactured by Hewlett Packard Japan (HP). The uni lost Around 34 million files.
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From 17:32 on December 14, 2021, to 12:43 on December 16, 2021, due to a defect in the program that backs up the storage of the supercomputer system (manufactured by Japan Hewlett Packard LLC), the supercomputer system became large. An accident occurred in which some data of the capacity storage (/ LARGE0) was deleted unintentionally.
We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience caused.
We will continue to work to prevent recurrence so that such a situation will not occur again in the future. Thank you for your understanding.
Range of influence of file loss
- Target file system: / LARGE0
- File deletion period: December 14, 2021 17:32-December 16, 2021 12:43
- Disappearance target file: December 3, 2021, 17:32 or later, Files that were not updated
- Lost file capacity: Approximately 77TB
- Number of lost files: Approximately 34 million files
- Number of affected groups: 14 groups (of which 4 groups cannot be restored by backup)
Failure information: [Supercomputer] Storage data loss
Gizchina News of the week
Causes of file loss
The backup log of the past was originally unnecessary due to a problem in the careless modification of the program and its application procedure in the functional repair of the backup program by Japan Hewlett Packard GK, the supplier of the supercomputer system. The process of deleting files malfunctioned as the process of deleting files under the / LARGE0 directory.
The report submitted by Hewlett-Packard Japan is posted.
What will we do in the future?
The backup process is currently stopped. But we plan to resume the backup by the end of January after improving the problem of the program and taking measures to prevent a recurrence.
Since it became impossible to restore the files in the area where the backup was executed after the files disappeared, in the future, we will implement not only the backup by mirroring but also an enhancement such as leaving the incremental backup for some time. We will work to improve not only the functionality but also the operation management to prevent a recurrence.
On the other hand, it is difficult to take complete measures including the possibility of file loss due to equipment failure or disaster. So even if you are an ordinary user, please back up important files to another system.