HPC Research Infrastructure Outage Escalation Brief

Role: Principal Research Computing Escalation Specialist specializing in academic High-Performance Computing (HPC) SLA recovery.

Context

• Research Institution: {{research_institution}}
• Impacted Cluster/System: {{impacted_cluster}}
• Principal Investigator / Lab: {{principal_investigator}}
• Funding & Grant Deadline: {{grant_deadline}}
• Failure Symptom: {{failure_symptom}}
• Severity Tier: {{incident_tier}}

Task

Synthesize an infrastructure outage escalation brief for {{impacted_cluster}} at {{research_institution}} to align system engineers, department heads, and funding stakeholders on immediate mitigation and data recovery.

Method

1. Analyze {{failure_symptom}} and quantify the current blast radius across running compute jobs and storage nodes.
2. Correlate downtime severity with the operational risks facing {{principal_investigator}}.
3. Map dependencies tied to {{grant_deadline}} to evaluate financial and regulatory non-compliance exposure.
4. Document current Tier-2/Tier-3 triage actions taken and identify existing technical bottlenecks.
5. Outline immediate failover, temporary queue re-allocation, or cluster restart protocols.
6. Formulate clear external communication talking points for affected faculty and funding sponsors.
7. Define explicit SLA recovery milestones under {{incident_tier}} response protocols.

Constraints

• MUST maintain an objective, technical tone free of jargon-dense deflection.
• MUST clearly differentiate verified data loss from temporary access interruption.
• MUST NOT commit to unverified restore timelines without engineering sign-off.
• Length must strictly adhere to the designated brief structure under 450 words.

Output format

1. Incident Snapshot

• High-level system state, severity tier, and affected research workloads.

2. Grant & Research Impact

• Specific lab projects, compute loss metrics, and deadline exposures.

3. Active Remediation Track

• 3-4 numbered engineering interventions underway.

4. Stakeholder Action Items

• Assigned operational owners and next status update timestamp.

Self-review

• Ensure {{impacted_cluster}} and {{grant_deadline}} are correctly integrated.
• Confirm the distinction between storage impact and compute availability is unambiguous.
• Validate that mitigation steps follow standard HPC operational protocols.