Blue Storage Migration, Nov. 2025 - Mar. 2026

UFIT Research Computing has published this Blue Storage Migration FAQ page to answer questions about the migration process. Please read through the FAQ as all users will be impacted by this transition.

The next stage of the HiPerGator 4th Gen upgrades involves migrating all user data from the current Blue storage system to a new system.

Info

• The old Blue storage system is approximately 7PB in capacity and is primarily traditional hard drives with spinning disks. While a small flash tier helps improve performance, the Blue filesystem is currently at 90% capacity and, at times, struggles to meet the workload demands from users across HiPerGator.
• The new Blue storage system is approximately 12 PB in capacity of all flash storage. This will increase capacity and performance across HiPerGator.

UFIT Research Computing staff are working with each group to copy their data to the new Blue storage. Once transitioned to the new storage, paths will remain unchanged, and users will still access their group's storage at the same /blue/<group> path. While an initial copy can be made with users logged in and jobs running, the final data synchronization and switch to the new storage requires that all users in the group be logged out and have no jobs running.

Notifications for each sponsor group

An email will be sent to both the hpc-announce list and to the sponsors of all group/top-level directories on /blue. This email ensures all users are aware of the pending changes and encourages groups to plan for communication of the scheduled transition date once sent in the second email to the sponsor.

A second email will go via the UFIT-RC support system only to the sponsor of the group with a scheduled transition date one or more weeks prior to the scheduled date. If a sponsor agrees with the scheduled date, no response is necessary.

It is up to the sponsor to reply to the support request if a different date is needed, and to communicate the date to the group members.

A sponsor can suggest a different date if the request is received before the scheduled migration date. UFIT-RC will make every reasonable effort to satisfy the request (there are some data management and concurrency considerations when scheduling transition dates).

If the date is acceptable, it is up to the sponsor to communicate this date with the group members. If no reply is received, the migration will happen on the scheduled date.

Frequently Asked Questions

What notifications will we get, and what does the group sponsor need to communicate to their users?

An email was sent in November to both the hpc-announce list and to sponsors of all group/top-level directories on /blue. That email ensures all users are aware of the pending changes and encourages groups to plan for communicating the scheduled transition date once it is sent in the second email to the sponsor.

The second email from the UFIT-RC support system will go only to the sponsor of the group with a scheduled transition date one or more weeks prior to the scheduled date. If a sponsor agrees with the scheduled date, no response is necessary.

It is up to the sponsor to reply to to the support ticket if a different date is needed.

A sponsor can suggest a different date if the request is received before the scheduled migration date. UFIT-RC will make every reasonable effort to satisfy the request (there are some data management and concurrency considerations when scheduling transition dates).

If the date is acceptable, it is up to the sponsor to communicate this date with the group members.

If no reply is received, the migration will happen on the scheduled date.

I am the sponsor of a group with an active Blue storage allocation, but I have not received the second email described above. What happened?

It is possible that your group has not been migrated yet - as of February 12, 2026, about 150 group folder migrations remain to be scheduled. We expect this to be done in the next week.

It is also possible your Blue group folder has already been migrated opportunistically while the folder was not in use. This was done to keep the old Blue system from filling up completely. If your Blue group folder falls into this category, you will not get a second email, as the migration is already done.

How can I tell if my group folder has been migrated?

Run the blue_quota command. If the output under the Filesystem column says blue2, then your group folder has been migrated.

How long will the migration take for my group?

In general, most groups can be migrated in a few hours or less. The migration will occur anytime within the 24-hour period on the scheduled date.

How will data be copied to the new Blue storage system?

UFIT-RC staff will employ a scalable copy tool called MPI File Utilities to migrate data on a group-by-group basis. The copy tool will be used during routine maintenance windows to minimize the impact on the /blue interactive response as much as possible.

Users do not need to copy their own data.

Please clean up data that is no longer needed before the transfer from the old /blue to the new /blue is completed. This will accelerate folder transfers.

Will any data on /blue not be copied?

Some Unix “special” files (character device, socket, fifo, named pipes, etc.) will not be copied. They must be recreated on the new filesystem. Since these files are usually created by applications, this will be automatic in most cases.

Will POSIX ACLs be copied?

Note: POSIX ACLs are not used by most groups

Yes, POSIX ACLs will be copied.

How will the transition to the new Blue storage system work?

Rolling group-by-group transitions between November 2025 and March 2026 will be scheduled, during which time a sponsor’s group directory will be synchronized to the new system and be made available as /blue/<group>. The original /blue/<group> directory will no longer be available. No data from the old /blue will be removed as part of this process.

During the transition, all users of the group must be logged out of HiPerGator and all jobs must be stopped.

What happens on the day of transition?

The transition will occur anytime within the 24-hour period on the scheduled date.

Any logins (ssh/sftp/globus/smb) will be killed, and any jobs in the batch system (pending or running) will be removed. Any PrivApps applications accessing the /blue/<group> will also be terminated.

The sponsor will receive an email from the UFIT-RC support system notifying them that the transition is complete, and that the group’s users should now access your Blue storage via /blue/<group>. Again, it will be up to the sponsor to notify group members that the transition is complete.

Will burst quotas be transferred to /blue storage?

Yes, burst quotas will transfer as currently set.

Before migration, I was able to access my /blue/<group> folder via SMB by mapping a drive to \\exasmb.rc.ufl.edu\blue\<group>. After migration, this no longer works. How do I fix this?

Please update the UNC (Universal Naming Convention) path for your Blue SMB mapped drive to \\smb.rc.ufl.edu\blue\<group>.

SMB access to Orange storage remains unchanged at this time. Pending a future announcement, please continue to use \\exasmb.rc.ufl.edu\orange\<group> for any Orange SMB mapped drives.

Note: Users should not attempt to access their Blue folder via \smb.rc.ufl.edu\blue until their group has been notified that their folder migration is complete.