Recover an unresponsive workstation
If a workstation stops responding, you can restart it yourself from the UI. There are two options, reboot and reprovision, and the choice depends on how readily your coretype can be reacquired.
Neither loses data written to disk. Both kill running processes, so unsaved application state is lost.
How you'll find out
Rescale checks connectivity to every node about once a minute. After 5 consecutive failures the workstation is flagged as unresponsive, and you get an hourly email while it stays that way.
Usual causes:
- Your workload consumed all available resources, leaving the machine unable to respond.
- Underlying hardware degradation on the host.
An unresponsive workstation is still billed. Recover or stop it: don't leave it sitting.
To turn the emails off: Preferences → Notifications, uncheck Workstation connectivity warning. Only the owner receives them.
Try waiting first
If the cause was a temporary resource spike, the workstation may recover on its own as the workload progresses. If you know a heavy step is running, give it a few minutes before restarting and losing that work.
Reboot or reprovision
Which to pick
Prefer reprovision when it's available. Moving to a new physical host clears hardware degradation, which a reboot can't.
Choose reboot if your coretype is capacity-constrained. Reprovisioning releases your hardware and asks for it back, and it may not be available. A reboot keeps the machine you have. This is the same capacity risk as suspending.
A reboot logs "Finished rebooting workstation" to the userlog when it's done.
Data preservation
Running simulations are killed by both operations, though their written output is kept.
Effect on collaborators
Anyone connected over the display protocol is disconnected abruptly, without warning. Tell them first. See sharing.
If it's still broken
Contact support@rescale.com. If the workstation failed rather than merely hung, the disk is retained for 7 days and data may be recoverable, but contact Support within that window. See saving and syncing files.
What isn't covered
- Batch jobs with desktop visualization don't support reboot or reprovision, and can't opt out of automatic termination on health-check failure.
- Workstations Basic doesn't include reboot or reprovision.
Related
- Save and sync your files — syncing before you restart
- Suspend and resume — the same capacity consideration
- Connect to your desktop — when it's connectivity, not the machine
- Limits & supported configurations — where reboot is supported