Storing and Transferring Files – Overview

The Roar system has several filesystems available for users for active and archival storage. Active storage can be utilized by running jobs and archival storage is intended for long-term data storage.

Active Storage

All of the active storage is available from all of the Roar systems. Individual users have home, work and scratch directories that are created during account creation. The work and scratch directories should have links within the home directory, allowing for easy use. A user’s home directory is for personal files and cannot be shared. Work and scratch are able to be shared. Both home and work are backed up. Scratch is not backed up and files are subject to deletion 30 days after creation. Do not keep important files on scratch.

Group directories can be created to help facilitate research within a group and can be purchased as an allocation. Note that individual allocations will have separate locations within the group directory.

Archival Storage

The archival storage is only available on the Data Manager nodes. Archival storage can be purchased as an allocation.

By design, archival storage is best suited for storing relatively small numbers of large files that will be accessed infrequently. Compared to active storage, read and write performance in archive storage will be very slow. Attempting to utilize archive storage when active storage would be more appropriate can result in system degradations that negatively impact all users of our shared system. Limiting files to a minimum 1GB or 1000 per TB is a good rule of thumb.